If you know me, you know I love bucket lists. I have so many: one on my Evernote app, one on here, one on a piece of paper, and one on my sticky notes on my computer. Checking something off my bucket list just gives me this happy feeling that I am doing whatever I can to get the best of out this amazing world.

One of the things I’ve had on my list for a while is going to the Thailand Lantern Festival. The modern festival is meant to symbolize letting go of your hatred and anger and negative thoughts. Very cool. So when I saw the opportunity to go to one in Las Vegas I just couldn’t let that offer go (it definitely would save us money on airfare)! We bought tickets 3 months before the event, drove down Saturday morning to the evening event and drove back up the next morning. Pretty crazy that Ryan went along with it, especially because he had to do half of the driving!

We met up with another couple and decided to leave our hotel at 4:30, giving us lots of time to make it to the start of the lifting the lanterns at 7:30. Long(and I mean loooooong) story short, we waited 2 hours on the freeway exit and an hour and a half in line for shuttles until we finally got to there. I was not going to let it ruin our night (although it almost did!)

As you can see we are very excited.

We literally got there 2 minutes before the lanterns were lifted. I know because people were counting off. We go as quick as we can to find a spot and none were in sight. Alexis and I were close to tears, thinking our long-awaited event had failed. I was the one who had planned this and so I felt this responsibility to make sure it was awesome! God must have knew we wanted so badly to do this because we miraculously found one spot open 30 seconds before the release and started to get a lantern ready. As we saw 10,000+ lanterns lift into the sky, it was the most amazing sight I have ever seen and we completely forgot about the hours we had waited in line. Ryan joked later that he never knew lanterns could make him so happy and that they should have depressed people do this activity because you feel like you can accomplish anything! It was a pretty amazing sight.

Part of the event was writing down those thoughts, dreams, or anything we wanted to release into the ‘heavens’. We didn’t have any time beforehand to write on own lanterns but if I had had time, something I would have put down was that I want to always make sure I am “real” happy and not worry so much about my “fake” happiness that I project to others, either in quick conversations or on social media. For some weird reason when I was little and would wish on a star, I would always wish to have a happy life. I guess that is still in me.

Even though I still have those rough days just like everyone else does, I am happy where I am and I am so happy to share my life with such an amazing guy who keeps me smiling!