300th post

At about 1:30 am this morning a big thunderstorm rolled in. We did not hear the siren or see the hail but the thunder and lightning woke us up. As I was watching out the doorway I heard about the loudest thunderclap I've ever heard - I did not see which tree got hit nearby, but I'm convinced one did. It only left about an inch of rain and not really any damage to speak of. The rain picture is from Monday morning's rain.

This afternoon we took Katie to a speech therapist. She said Katie is doing well, especially considering that she just started learning English in January and has that cleft palate. Some areas of weakness include pronouns and plurals, which we noted were not really big concepts in the Mandarin language so we are not surprised that she is behind in that. At one point the therapist asked her to talk about her bunny. She said "Bunny at home". When pressed for more details about the bunny she said very clearly "Bunny not here". It was funny. Katie's cleft palate surgery is scheduled for June 30. We need to get her to stop putting her fingers in her mouth so she does not damage the stitches. We have tried the bad-tasting nail polish and it has not worked and are looking for other ideas.