Celebrating the Mid-Autumn Festival

You might remember when I posted about celebrating the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival last year, but this year we decided to celebrate with some friends. It turned out to be a great idea, despite the minor chaos of having 3 kids make lanterns when it was almost bedtime.

The kids got help taping ribbon to the bottom of the lanterns, and everyone's turned out spectacular.

We used paper lanterns from Party City and stuck LED tea lights inside, in case you ever want to try this at home. Then I cut up the mini moon cakes I'd gotten at the Asian grocery and we all got to try some - they were super good! Trust me and do not buy the cheapie moon cakes, the ones we got last year were not delicious. I spent $16 instead of $6 and was well rewarded!

Once the moon cakes were devoured, we got ready for our parade down to the creek path to see the moon. The kids all tried their lanterns out on the porch first.

Then we were off! K's grandma (who actually IS Chinese) sang us a silly song in Chinese about the moon jumping over a cow, which made all the kids laugh. All the kiddos eagerly anticipated seeing the moon, but when we got to the path, it was too cloudy, with no moon in sight. The kids still ran around like crazy people and had fun, and at one point we asked them what they would wish for if they saw the moon, and all of them said they would wish for their daddies... which seemed very sweet even though we didn't really know what they meant by that. Maybe their hearts are so full, there's no room for wishing.

On the walk back, having not seen a single glimpse of the moon, the kids were still jubilant and waving their lanterns all over. But as we looked back, we started to see a bit of the moon trying to break through the clouds. And when we were almost back to the house, there it came! Just the rounded bottom of the circle, but we could see it! The kids went wild with joy.

What a beautiful night together!