The End of The Mid Autumn Festival....

So, we finished up celebrating The Moon Festival last Friday. Sophie and I were lucky enough to be able to join Emma in her Kindergarten classroom for a little while. The girls dresses up in their silks from Guangzhou, we made paper lanterns and ate an interesting snack. The captions will tell the rest of the story. :)


Miss. Sophie was pretty excited to wear her dress and Emma's old coat.
In fact, I'd say that she was looking a bit sassy....

Maybe conceited? ;)

Sophie posing in Emma's school.

And, in a hurry to get to Emma's room....

Emma & her friends were in music when we arrived. I had the chance to snap a couple of pictures while we waited for them to return.I won't go into details now, but Emma is OBSESSED with this frog! :D

This sign hangs outside of her room.

Emma and her Para, Ms. Kiley. A minute after I snapped this picture Emma ran over and brought Sophie and I to her table. :)

Listening to Mrs. Loux give instructions on Lantern making!

Emma did a GREAT job cutting!

So did Sophie!

This picture is one of my FAVORITES. :)

Emma passing out the infamous "corn rice sticks with vegetarian meat floss"...LOL! Most of the kids did not care for them...it was hilarious to watch.

Children questioning the vegetarian meat floss perhaps?! ;P

Emma LIKED sharing with her friends. So cute. Of course if anyone said "No thank you" she got a bit perturbed. :)

Emma's school!!!

Sophie checking to see if Emma is coming. Nope not yet. She waits like this every day. Sometimes Sophie takes a jog while we are waiting.

We ended up finding Emma on the playground instead! :) Do you see her?

After school the girls and I took an hour long walk. Actually, I walked and they ate a sack lunch and relaxed while enjoying the scenery. :)

They *were* kind enough to pose by the hay bales for me....

They like looking at the cows. These are actually across from Sophie's school (where Emma attended last year).

The Kansas girls posing by the state flower; the sunflower.

After our walk the girls wanted to show off their lanterns for the camera!

Blog Under Construction?

Please disregard the current look of the girl's blog. I was trying to spruce it up and really, really, screwed it up. After over an hour I am too tired to play with it. I can not fix the backround nor can I fix the font. I have the wrong template too. ACKKKKK!!!! I will fix it as soon as I can. Please bear with me because I have some cute pictures to add. :)

Hangin' on the Driveway....

One of Emma and Sophie's favorite things to do is play on our driveway. They could literally be out there ALL day, EVERY day. Of course they are only allowed outside with a grown up...so these excursions are as MY schedule permits! :)

Emma is admittedly obsessed with the "stripes/lines" on our driveway. Apparently the masonry is not top notch because according to Emma the lines are crooked. And, do you know what? I BELIEVE HER. Emma can see things differently than most of us. If she says that they are crooked...then they are. :) Emma has had a challenging time at school holding herself together...so I let her blow off some steam Wednesday afternoon. She likes to follow the lines with a car...it is VERY autistic....but, she needed the release of doing it. So, I let her. With out redirecting to a more "typical" form of play. She was happy. :)

Sophie had a good time too! She is completely different from LAST year. Oh my. She LOVES to fly around on one of her bikes. :) A change from the days of her sitting on her bike with out moving with tears of terror in her eyes. ;)

My Sweeties!

I love, love, LOVE it when the girls fall asleep together in Emma's bed! :-) I stood and stared for a minute or two, then I just HAD to grab the I probably took 12 pictures! Here are a few...

Meat Floss and Moldy Moon Cakes...

This is the fourth Mid Autumn festival that I have celebrated. I love this Asian holiday & the meaning behind it. If you go back to my post last year (September 2009) I had entered a little synopsis from the Internet about the holiday. If you are not familiar with Mid Autumn Festival...also known as Moon Festival....think of it as an Chinese version of Thanksgiving.

We had the best intentions of celebrating last weekend and somehow things really did not come to fruition. When you have a 3 & 6 year old sometimes you just can't "make" things happen. :) Being more of a seasoned and experienced parent I know that I am not scarring them for life if we don't celebrate every holiday "perfectly". :)

Remember in my previous post that I had announced that we were going to go out to eat? *Cough*. Well...Emma and Sophie did NOT want Chinese food....or ANY Asian cuisine for that matter on Saturday. They did not want to eat IN a restaurant for that matter! They BEGGED for their ONCE A WEEK treat of a Happy Meal instead. It was 5 o'clock, it was pouring rain, they were starving and grouchy, I had a headache....so we told them yes. I believe that I muttered something about a cheeseburger being round like the moon? (Greg & I opted for Thai food)!

We *did* visit a new Asian market. It is geared more toward Vietnamese culture. But, the owners were friendly & it did not smell TOO fishy. And, they had moon cakes! So, we bought a box of 4 figuring that we could eat 2 at home and Emma could take 2 to school to share with her class. I was naively pleased that they gave us $5 off of the box and assumed that it was because Moon Festival had started on the 22nd and most boxes had sold out. Come to find out the next day when I opened the box...the moon cakes had MOLD beginning to colonize on them....Ewwwww! Needless to say we did NOT try eat them. :( Emma DID find some snacks to bring to Kindergarten for her Moon Festival celebration tomorrow. I *thought* that they were cookies. Ummm, yeah-they are not. Upon closer inspection at home I saw that they were called "Corn Rice Sticks w/Vegetarian Meat Floss". :D LOL! (If anyone knows what vegetarian meat floss is please let me know)!!! The girls wanted to try one. Emma took one bit and spit it out announcing that she did NOT care for it. Sophie ate hers AND the rest of Emma's! She has eaten a few more since. Greg and I took a tiny nibble and I would describe them as corn chips w/a peanut butter center. Gross-gross. I am curious to see the reaction of Emma's classmates tomorrow as they try them....LOL....I know, I am mean. :D

Here are a few pictures:

"Yummmm, I think that I remember eating these unique snacks in China"!
It was difficult to get a clear shot of the package...
Moldy Moon Cakes anyone?