This is the first time that we actually went out for the Mid-Autumn Festival (Lunar Festival) in a long time. I think we went the first couple of years we were here. Then everything happened, and I sort of stopped. I couldn’t pretend we were a happy family and do happy family things. At the time, B was always around. He was also pushing for us to do family things. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t be the happy family because we weren’t.

This year though, I wasn’t going to let him stop me (or rather I wasn’t going to let me stop me). I had planned to take the kids to Ma On Shan Park to sit for a while, but I think things got away from me. We didn’t end up in Ma On Shan.

I had spent a lot of time the day before and after school making snacks for the kids to eat while we looked at the moon. I made things that I used to make when we lived in the US (almond tofu, rolled egg, cream cheese cookies, and a few other things I don’t remember now).

I packed it all up and we went to the park outside our compound. It’s the one they started building when we first moved there. They had finished the park probably about 6 months ago, but we rarely go that way to go anywhere and hadn’t been down there.

The Lunar Festival is a long thing. Generally, people will spend all night sitting outside watching the moon. It’s the first full moon of the autumn. It’s important enough that we have the day after off from school because it’s completely the norm to stay up until the moon sets.

We did not. We stayed out until about 11:30 PM or so.

It was a good time to spend with the kids. They weren’t thrilled about the whole thing. They spent a lot of time on their phones. This may be one of the last times though that we are all together like this. Well, we may have one more year since Monkey still has one more year of college left. Her plan though is to go to the US to go to school there. Bub will finish high school in a couple of years, and I know he will go back to the US. Then it will be just me and the Monster.

It was really a fun time to spend with the kids and even with B. I am happy when I see him have positive interactions with the kids. Things had been so negative for so long. There was so much damage done. To see him and the kids laughing together, it makes me happy. If anything, I want them to have a better relationship. I feel like even if I’m not sure about him, I am at least giving them time to have a happier relationship with each other.