Celebrating Autumn Moon Festival

We spent a part of our weekend celebrating the Autumn Moon Festival, which is one of the major Chinese holidays. It is Chinese custom to spend evenings looking at the full moon and enjoy time with family. They also eat moon cakes and other circular foods. We can't provide Anna Grace with the kind of Chinese culture that she would have living in China, but we are doing what we can to learn more about Chinese holidays and celebrations.


We started the weekend with a new picture book about a family celebrating the Moon Festival. Because we like to eat appetizer dinners while we watch football as a family, we made a special appetizer dinner Saturday night with "moon shaped" foods. It seemed really involved to make moon cakes, so we settled for a Southern tradition- moon pies! Anna Grace and I also made sugar cookies with white icing to look like full moons and decorated them with star shaped sprinkles. We brought our special supper down to the basement to eat while we watched the game.
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Today we went to an event hosted by the Asian Mentoring Program at the local university. Most of the little girls dressed in traditional Chinese clothing and the students put on little skits and musical performances for the children. They also had games, face painting, and traditional Chinese snacks. They even had real moon cakes and not my version of moon pies! Anna Grace had a great time playing with some of the other adopted Asian kids from our area. She finally got to meet Janie, a little girl who lives very close to us, and Anna Grace seemed to connect with her right away. She kept sharing her babydoll with Janie and gave her lots of hugs. They were so cute together. I hope we can get Anna Grace and Janie together for a play date soon. We also think we may have connected with a mentor for Anna Grace. We really don't want her to forget all of her Chinese language, and we want her to have people around her that look similar to her.