After one year and half of very hard work and creative solutions to cope with the pandemic and all sorts of supply chain disruptions and delays, the trapped-ion team is happy to announce the first trapped ions in the state of Texas! In the left picture you can see four happy 171Yb+ atoms. On the right, we had fun setting radial and axial frequency very close, so that the ions are arranged in a nice “emoticon” configuration :). Thanks everyone! And now the real fun starts!