Lantern Fest

This past August the Madisons and I went to Lantern Fest. I had seen pictures from events like this and have wanted to go for a while, as had Bethy, so we were so excited to finally be making it happen! The event was located right next to the Utah Motorsports Campus which is about 40 minutes west of the city. When we arrived we were given a lantern and a s'more kit.

Then we went to find a fire pit to gather around. Each fire pit can accommodate 2-3 families, we shared ours with the sweetest father and his two adorable kids. We really lucked out with our fire pit buddies, they were so fun and so cute.

Since we hadn't ever been to this event before, we didn't really know what to expect so we weren't quite as prepared as we would have liked to be. First of all, we didn't have anything to sit on luckily we were able to find some blankets to buy, next time we will be bringing some camp chairs. We also didn't know what the food situation was going to be like so we picked up some costa vida and ate it on the drive, but there are tons of fun food trucks to supply dinner, next time we will be picnicking in our camp chairs.

We had a fun time making s'mores while waiting for the sun to go down, this was V's first experience with s'mores and she was super excited about roasting the marshmallows.

Our super cute fire pit buddies

While watching the beautiful sunset, we were serenaded with live music

In our s'more boxes, we were given sharpies to write wishes we wanted to send up with our lanterns. Vienne drew very pretty pictures on her lantern.

As it got darker, we were instructed to light the tiki torches, these would come in super handy to light the lanterns.

When it was finally dark enough, it was time to light the lanterns!!!

Being surrounded by hundreds of floating lanterns was beyond magical, there are literally no words to describe the feeling. It's one of those sights that want to make you cry happy tears because it is just so beautiful, it was truly unlike anything I had ever experienced, it was almost other worldly.

Turns out the lanterns are super hard to light and get up in the air. We struggled, but we managed to get three of our lanterns up. Next time we don't think we even want to light a lantern, we just want to take in the experience and not have to worry about getting our lanterns up. We gave our last lantern away to a group of ladies that really seemed to be experts in this tricky art, and they were beyond thrilled.

This event really isn't like anything else out there, it is magical, and fun, and wholesome, and beautiful, and creative and so much fun. We loved our experience, but we viewed it as a practice round and can't wait to go again now that we are experts on what to expect.