Happy Autumn Moon

The Autumn Moon Festival begins Monday with the full moon, the eighth lunar moon of the year.

I think I have posted about this important Chinese holiday before so I am not going to describe it in this post. I am preparing to go away for a week on business and the weekend was bit more hectic than I prefer preparing for this trip.

Between craziness at work and the hulabalu from the Hurricane the week before this year's Autumn Moon really snuck up on me!

But, we did manage to get some fun activities in for the holiday all weekend long.

Friday-night the girls stayed up a bit later than usualy and we went for

a nightly stroll to gaze at the nearly full moon.

Saturday the girls and I went to a local Dragon Boat Fesitval and Taiwanese Festival.

It started off with a shuttle bus ride on a school bus-- which may not sound like \

much to you, but when you are 3 and nearly 5, getting ride in a real

big kid school bus is all the RAGE!

There were a few performances including a really

booming drum corp.

The girls wanted their picture taken with the drums after the show.

A famous Taiwanese Band, Wu Shu, played several beautiful songs.

Josie was a little disappointed that we didn't get to see any dancers perform at this event,

but she really liked the music.

We wandered to the river-side and watched a few of the dragon boat races.

The seating for these races aren't as nice as the dragon boat races we

watched last month, but you are able to get closer to the boats.

Josie and Clara Rose both say they want to race in a dragon boat

when they are big enough.

Each dragon boat team had at least one member compete in a dumpling eating contest.

It was a fun event to watch.

The winner ate 19 dumplings in 2 minutes.

Before we left four of the dragon boats floated out in the river next to each other and all the riders and many people on the banks threw a pink carnation into the river

in memory or support of someone fighting breast cancer.

It was a nice ceremony and lovely to watch.

That afternoon I made some yummy dishes, following to the best of my ability,

recipes from my Chinese cookbook.

Dumplings (of course!).

Tea Eggs

Pineapple fried rice with Shrimp, served in a pineapple shell.

Call me crazy, but I think this might be more of a Hawaiian dish than Chinese- but it was a fun dish to eat.

Today we did a little bit of shopping and then hung

out in the yard.

The days are sunny, but a bit cooler.

Fall is in the air.