Pinto Family Update | December 2025

Dear family and friends,

Another year has come and gone, bringing with it many new adventures and experiences to remember. Here is a brief update on some of our family’s highlights from 2025.

Jaime completed her first full year as a dental hygienist at a local dental office 🪥. She feels lucky to get to chat with the coolest people in town, all of whom are basically paying to act as her personal community of therapists. She has also somehow finally managed to convince Juan that adopting a retired racing greyhound will satiate her desire for more animals. (Though let’s be honest, we all know that’s not true.)

After far too much schooling, Juan finally graduated with his PhD this year 🎓! He also began his first post-doctorate job as a data scientist at McGraw Hill. He’s loved his first few months working at the exciting intersection of AI and education, even if his family still doesn’t quite understand what he does all day. Also, let’s just say that Jaime’s not too sad about him not being on a student salary anymore.

Ishmael is now in 4th grade. This year he has really taken off with reading, math, piano, and gymnastics. His big accomplishments include memorizing over 400 digits of pi, learning to play Merry-Go-Round of Life (from Howl’s Moving Castle) on the piano, and tying for second place in his age group at his first-ever gymnastics competition 🤸. He also loved his first backpacking trip this fall with his dad!

Lucia is now in 2nd grade. She continues to love animals and art, so our walls are covered in drawings of kitties and puppies with huge eyes 🐱. We didn’t think her collection of stuffed animals could get any bigger, but oh how wrong we were. She also loves gymnastics and is constantly practicing cartwheels, splits, and pull-ups. She’s been improving her reading skills tremendously lately, and now her new e-ink Kindle keeps her up way too late at night.

Joaquin started kindergarten this year and is loving it! He reads quite well in Spanish but only reluctantly in English 📚. He loves being in the same school with his older siblings and going to gymnastics with them. He has really excelled academically and socially this year and is a total goofball at home. He and Lucia love pretending to be kitties together, and he adores our two cats almost as much as she does.

Some additional updates:

• This year was full of travel! We celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary in Turkey 🇹🇷 and Thailand 🇹🇭 (sans kids), where we simultaneously got to visit Jaime’s brother. We also went to a Pinto family reunion in Colombia 🇨🇴, a Fifield family reunion in Utah ⛰️, and the kids got to play with their cousins in Texas for the holidays. Juan also spent a few days in Sicily 🇮🇹 for his last academic conference as a graduate student during the summer—something he’ll miss tremendously.
• Jaime’s been lobbying hard for us to adopt a retired racing greyhound 🐕, and after years of effort, it looks like we’re finally about to adopt one! Stay tuned for our 2026 end-of-year video to feature many, many dog pics.
• 2025 marks five years since we moved to Champaign-Urbana. It’s been a wonderful home for us 🏡, especially with so much family nearby. The kids get to play with their cousins almost every day, Juan’s mom 👵🏼 gets to spoil her grandkids, and we get to enjoy big family dinners regularly.

As always, and for the 9th year in a row, here is our 2025 memories video, with one second for (almost) every day of the year:

If it’s been a while, we’d love to hear from you! May 2026 bring you much joy, fulfillment, and more adventures 🎉🍾!

Love,
Juan, Jaime, Ishmael, Lucia, and Joaquin
🧔🏾‍♂️👱🏼‍♀️🧑🏽👧🏽👦🏽🐈🐈‍⬛