We celebrated our annual Autumn Moon Festival on Saturday. It just happened that grandma and grandpa were visiting and my sister, her husband, and two kids joined us as well. Friday night we were up late making the cookies. We pressed the dough into the wood molds and added bean paste and almond paste fillings.
On Saturday morning we gathered all our festival lights and pumpkin lights to set up our decorations on the porch. We usually celebrate in the playhouse but with so many joining us this year we had to improvise a bit.
Once everyone showed up and dressed in their chinese silk outfits, we started with decorating lanterns. We used my daughter's new set of watercolor pens and they worked out very well. I cut a cardstock 8.5x11 paper in half lengthwise and gave every kid a paper to work on. We brought out a few of the chinese "chop" stamps to use too.
When everyone had finished a panel or two I stapled them into a cylinder. I gathered up several glass jelly canning jars and candles placed the lantern collars around the jars. We lit up a bon fire in the back yard by the playhouse and toasted a few marshmallows (if you have a fire this is clearly required). 
We put on the chinese music tape and the kids gathered up their ribbon sticks to dance about the yard. Its always so pretty at dusk as they run around with the smoke from the fire making everything so mysterious. They pretended to be dragons and raced about chasing each other.
We ordered chinese takeout for dinner to make it easier (with that many additional people) and the kids ate on the porch amongst all our lanterns and lights. After dinner we had our chinese green tea and mooncakes as well as a few fortune cookies.
We waited until the moon was up to take our traditional walk down to the river. We gathered up our handmade "lanterns" and one small flashlight and walked through the dark field and woods down to the bank of the river. There we set two apples afloat with small candles on the water. A beaver upstream was busy slapping the water and scaring the kids a bit. We stood in the moonlight quietly watching the candles float downstream saying a quiet prayer for loved ones near and far. My youngest -- hearing one too many "swamp monster" stories in her life made a quicker exit with grandma. I always love this walk by candlelight.
