Sky Lanterns

Have you seen Tangled? If so, and you are like me... you have wanted to see floating sky lanterns ever since. For some reason, I thought I would have to go to Asia to some festival in order to see them. I mean... I would still love to do that too, but until then... turns out you can buy them online. So I bought them. I bought 40 of them this summer. It seemed like a summer thing to do, probably because summer nights are so perfect. I didn't end up doing it this summer because there were so many fires and I heard they were illegal. So they sat in a box.

As my 30th birthday approached, I wondered what I wanted to do. I wanted to make it special and do something different. Then it hit me. I wanted to float 30 sky lanterns for my 30th birthday. How magical would that be? Now that it is freezing and snowy outside, there were no worries of starting any fires. When my roommates asked me what I wanted to do for my birthday, I told them this was the only thing I cared about doing. I didn't want a party, I just wanted to float lanterns. Since my roommates are amazing, I ended up getting both.

In the beginning of December, I was hoping for snow... so I didn't have to worry about anything catching on fire. Then right before my birthday and on my birthday... it wouldn't stop snowing. even though I knew I could still float the lanterns in the snow (because I looked it up) I still wanted it to stop for a better sky lantern experience. I also wanted people to come. It snowed all day and night, but right before we went out to the park to float the lanterns, it stopped snowing. The sky was clear and everything was beautiful and bright all covered with fresh snow. It was a birthday miracle.

I didn't get as many as I would have liked to float the lanterns, but there were enough people to let off a handful at a time, which made the fun last longer for us instead of getting a bunch of people to just let one off all at the same time (which also would have looked cool). Some of my closest friends were there, and that is all that matters. The lanterns also attracted some strangers.... like Gill, who was already at the park when we got there, smoking. We ran out of matches pretty quick and Gill heard us say we needed a lighter, so he came over and helped us light all of the lanterns and I let him float some off too. There were also people in the ward who saw the lanterns and came over to check them out. My roommate Sarah, who was meeting us there said she could see them from the road and they looked amazing. Everyone said it was the coolest thing. Thank you to those who came. It meant a lot to me since it was the one thing I wanted to do. Also a big thanks to my BFF Neighbor Darrell for taking all of these awesome pictures. Everything was perfect.

It was so magical and awesome that I decided a video needed to be made. And it should be made with the song from Tangled playing in the background. So... I put together this video. I kind of love it.



It all couldn't have turned out better. Turns out Winter is the time to do this activity. I would love to do it again sometime. It was that epic. It was seriously so beautiful and magical... it was exactly what I wanted. Perfect for my 30th birthday.