August Moon Festival

It's the night of the August Moon Festival, probably the second most important holiday in Chinese culture (the first being the New Year's celebration of course). August Moon celebrates the arrival of the harvest and the celebration is marked with a family dinner and feast (aren't all Chinese holidays marked that way?), along with the tasty moon cakes.

It was no different this August Moon for our family, although it might have been a little more hectic for us than it was for other families. Lars and I took a breather from working on the new house to join my parents, Marie and Michaela (along with little Lauren of course) for August moon dinner at Canton Delights, our normal haunt for Chinese celebrations.

After a sumptous dinner my dad presented everyone with a moon cake for desert! Little Lauren slept through most of it, as usual.

Lauren has been continuing to amaze us with her awareness of her world. Grandma has been especially pleased with the fact that she knows when there's people around and will speak baby to them, and she'll quiet down when there's no one around. She also likes a moving car. In her car seat, as long as the car is moving she's content and happy, but hit a red light and stop, and she'll begin complaining! Grandma just finished knitting a new sweater and cap for Lauren for the coming winter!

Good news comes to us from the east coast. My cousin Michael should have left Iraq yesterday (Saturday), and should be on his way home, reaching New York sometime on Thursday. Welcome home Michael!

Since I'm not at work (and not looking at my corporate calendar), a little bird had to tell me it's Annette's birthday this weekend. To celebrate she, my sister, and Amelia and Danel went away to Napa for the weekend. Happy Birthday Annette.

Good news on the home sale. All contingencies were removed today, so we're on target to have the home sold by mid October. That means we're going to have to move soon! We are getting closer to that point. We were able to finish almost all the drywall work this weekend, so now, it's on to finish work, painting, trim mouldings, some light electrical (switching light fixtures), and the staircase railing. With any luck we'll be in by end of September.

I'm going to call a mover this week, and see if we can book anything in the last week of September, if not it'll have to be in October!