Moon Festival

Sunday night was lots of fun.  Zhang Lin (Linlin) ,Luci's Chinese teacher (we took a class in May and June at UNA) invited our family to UNA's Chinese Student Association's Moon Festival dinner.  Linlin is from Guizhou, just like Luci!

Moon Festival (Mid-Autumn Festival) can be compared to our Thanksgiving--lots of food, visiting family, and traditions.  It is the second-most important holiday in the Chinese calendar, with Chinese New Year being the first.

Traditional Moon Cakes were passed around.  Our table got these little treats to share...never fear, there was no bean paste in the middle of these!  There was a mixture of nuts in the middle.  We liked them better than the bean paste version, but Linlin did not; she prefers the bean paste.

Tren,  one of the students we've met at library functions.  He's lots of fun.

Two more lovelies from China...it was so nice to see Bridgyt's daughters again.

Luci was very shy most of the night, until...until they took a group photo!  She's there, right in the very middle.  Double click on the photo to enlarge it.  When we got home, I asked Luci what she thought about the dinner.  It was lots of fun!  There were tons of ME there!

Linlin and Luci

Mid-Autumn Moon Festival

Today is the Harvest Moon Festival in China. Luci fell asleep before the moon came up tonight. Luci's nightly ritual is to blow kisses to the moon for Daddy and catch the kisses Daddy sent up the night before. (Another thing to help with Daddy's deployment.)
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We skipped the real moon cakes and had moon pies instead. Moon cakes are an acquired taste.
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This website has some interesting tidbits about the Moon Festival. Here is a real moon cake recipe and here is one place for ordering, if you are more adventurous than we are.

The Other Day...

I went out onto the deck and heard a commotion...there were three "army guys" in John's pick-up, defending Freedom!

Pretty tough, huh? Two nerf guns and an empty bb gun. The bad guys never knew what hit 'em. Our neighbor Clay, Bryan, and JT.

Gorgeous moon!