This Sunday we celebrated our yearly Autumn Moon Festival in our backyard with the cousins and grandma and grandpa. Isabelle insisted on tiki torches for the patio and I found a few more sets of lights to string outside as well as an abundance of candles.
The kids started the party by dressing up in their silk outfits. Then we each painted a paper lantern or banner. The kids had a lot of fun doing this yearly craft so we have quite a collection of lanterns from all the past years too. 
Then they headed outside grabbing the ribbon sticks to dance about the yard. Some were rainbow colored and others handmade from ribbons. A music tape was set up in the playhouse.
We made cookies with our chinese wooden cookie molds. Since we had purchased a box of mooncakes we just made cookies with vanilla and chocolate shortbread recipes (the chocolate was awesome!).
We ordered take out from our local Panda Wok and supplimented that with steamed buns and pork shumi from a chinese grocery store in Littleton.After dinner we made tea and served it in our tiny tea sets from China and ate our mooncakes. Then we each took a lantern and a few floating candles and walked down to the river in the darkness. We could see the moon coming up through the clouds. Our little lanterns shown just enough light to walk by. At the river we each lit a candle and sent it floating down river with a prayer and moment of silence. It was so pretty! We walked back up towards the house and restarted our bonfire and toasted marshmallows and lit sparklers.
Mark was a bit under the weather and enjoyed the day relaxing watching sports on tv with Uncle Pete. Emma took over on cooking the steamed food (Mark's job) and did an excellent job. Mark didn't make it outside to enjoy the night lights and walk under the moonlight and we missed him. But the kids were busy enough to keep Robin, Grandma, and I running around.
