Happy Mid-Autumn Festival from our family to yours!

What is this special Chinese holiday? It's when "people and the moon reunite to form a full circle," as an old saying goes. There's a lot of mystery shrouding when and where the traditions in this festival started, however one thing is clear: it's a time for families to come together and celebrate with food and fun! Most families make or buy mooncakes, which come in a variety of flavors: egg yolk, lotus seed, green tea, red bean, and many more! 

It can be intimidating to attempt celebrating a holiday that you've never personally experienced. We as adoptive parents know that it's important to observe our child's birth culture, but how do we do this when Chinese culture is foreign to us? 

Easy! Pinterest, blogs, and the good ole internet will be your new best friend! Here are a few simple ways we celebrated our son's Chinese birth culture today: mooncakes, lanterns, and, of course, food!

1. Making Mooncakes (the hard way!)

To be truthfully honest, mooncakes aren't my favorite thing in the world to eat. Period. I'd rather eat a million other yummy Chinese foods before them...unless it's a chocolate or ice cream one! We tried this recipe today and it was an experience to say the least! Our dough turned out a little sticky, but the kids had fun stamping the mooncakes. (Molds can be found on Amazon, like this one here.)

And making mooncakes the easy way: playdough!

A brilliant, less-intimidating way to let the kids have fun with the molds!

2. Making Lanterns

We used a very easy pattern from Gift of Curiosity to make these lanterns! We let the kids decorate them first and then cut them. Super simple!

3. Read "Round is the Mooncake" by Grace Lin

Although there are many Mid-Autumn Festival books for children, this is probably the most well-known...and of course, most well-loved in our family! You can find it here. 

4. Eat Chinese Food!

Of course, no festival is complete without some good Chinese food! And if you want to do it the super simple way, you can just serve up some frozen dumplings! 

So here are four extremely simple ways to celebrate Mid-Autumn Festival...and one that's a little more challenging, but lots of fun! We hope you enjoyed seeing how we're learning and enjoying our son's birth culture. International adoption can be scary, but with a little creativity and googling, you can continue on cultural traditions in your family!