God moves in a mysterious way

I love that song.

So many times when things happen there is no other explanation. We had a brief incident this morning where Annabel actually allowed me to console her. It was very short lived and afterward we ate our breakfast together in silence, but it was a HUGE step!

Since we did our marathon of fun yesterday it was a good day to just play.

The rain continued to fall along with a few thunderstorms so when it was clear, the crowd went outside. They have discovered it is fun to take Ollie and Nina with them. Those poor dogs are sleeping as soundly as me from all the fun!

Everyone wanted to play Barbies but were not too sure how that would work if one does not speak English. I let them work it out on their on and at times Annabel would come bouncing in with I'm HUNGRY! At least this week she is more comfortable at home to come in and out of their bedroom. I think it made it easier on all.

We bought the entire Harry Potter series in Chinese and Annabel has been reading the first one. This afternoon they watched the movie but I am not sure if she made a connection to it without the closed captioning or whatever you would call it.

Tonight we did our old stand by of Luby's for dinner. There are always a group of church members who go before services.

We used to go to Luby's every Wednesday night for their free kid's meal. Jana would join us when she got off work and we would already have the kids there.

It was very difficult to go back to Luby's for the first time afterward and always worry that it is making Gillian sad.

But it seemed like a good plan for tonight.

I cannot imagine what Annabel was thinking as we went through the line and I only allowed her one entree. She chose spaghetti. Now if I had known she would eat spaghetti I would have been set. She also chose corn and fried okra.

Now I have only been to China twice and to only 2 of their provinces, but cannot recall fried okra on any of the menus, or okra in any form.

I sat in anticipation of this meal.

I bought things I thought she would eat as back up, fish, more corn, and broccoli.

She put the first piece of okra in her mouth. What a face. Too bad you can't blink and it be a snapshot you can share. She decided she liked the breading. She ate the spaghetti but put every tiny bit of meat to the side. I thought she just didn't like ground meat (rarely used in China) but instead saved it to make a sandwich with her roll. She also ate most of her jello.

While we were in Luby's we had another big thunderstorm. Most of our group thought it was lightning but instead was my camera trying to capture this allusive child for your enjoyment.

As we came out there was a rainbow.

I hope my little camera captured its beauty. It has been a long time since I saw a rainbow.

Then as we waited to leave the parking lot, you could literally see the rain falling directly in front, but not on us.

To finish the evening we had an ice cream cone at Dairy Queen. Two Texas favorites all in one evening.

You know I must be tired if that is all I can write!