Ashleigh's 23rd Birthday

Yes, that's right world, I am 23 years old... and almost a week. It's strange to be at this age, it came so fast. Anywho, my 23rd birthday was basically amazing. The night before my birthday, Brian and Shelly were still here, so we went to my favorite restaurant for dinner... TGI Fridays:). My meal was amazing as usually and I think everyone else was pleased with theirs... but who really cares, it was my birthday;). Brian and Shelly also treated me to another Carlo's Bakery cupcake... YUM! The day of my birthday Todd and I went to the Statue of Liberty. Now if you remember awhile back, I posted about our first attempt at visiting Lady Liberty; it didn't go so well, but it did prepare us for this trip. We bought tickets for the crown in September and we knew exactly where to go this time. We thought it wouldn't be very busy, and it probably wasn't at all busy compared to other days, but we did have the pleasure of being there with a bunch of school field trip kids (pretty darn cool school trip). We first stopped at Ellis Island. I found a lot of "Daltons" and a lot of "Girards" (my mom's maiden name... funny story... so my great grandpa hated dotting the "i" in his last name so he change the spelling to "Gerard"... kinda made family history difficult but totally something my family would do). I don't know if any of them are related to me, but I'll just pretend because it makes Ellis Island cooler. The Statue of Liberty was a lot neater than I thought it would be. We, however, were not informed of the fact that we had to climb the dang thing... this is a modern marvel... elevators? It wasn't as bad as I make it out to be, I just don't like to move if I don't have to:). We got to the point where the staircase was a spiral and very small... it kind of made me sick but that too, didn't last long. The crown is very small, not a lot of people can fit in it but it has some great views. I forgot to mention that the day we went had wind advisories the whole day. It was sooooo windy. Now I'm from Idaho and I lived in Rexburg so I know wind, but man oh man it was windy... I seriously thought at some points we would fly away. This wind made the statue very wabally but the park ranger kept reminding us that the statue is very safe. I don't know if many people know, but I love history. I love learning about things from the past and stories behind everything. We spent a good 20 minutes up there asking the park ranger questions about everything; it was a fun history lesson. After the crown we went to the observation decks... holy cow... WINDY!!! The observation decks aren't very big so we shared this wonderful experience with cursing teenagers who thought they were going to die. We might have spent a longer time out there but I was kinda scared I would lose our camera. We made our way out of the statue and took some pictures at the bottom. I lost our camera lens cover!! It was completely on the camera and then all the sudden it dropped and started rolling away. I chased it like a mad woman but I guess the cover wanted to be with the ocean... dang it.

That evening Todd took me to see "The Lion King." There were two shows I wanted to see while we were here, "Wicked" and "The Lion King." I am so happy that we were not disappointed with either show. "The Lion King" was amazing!!!! The costumes were incredible and so were the set designs. The audience kept cheering just for the costumes and the set... we also cheered for the acting but, wow... it was such a pleasure to watch. I'm also a sucker for anything Disney and "The Lion King" has always been one of my favorite movies so that helped. We also had amazing seats. We were on the balcony, second row so nothing was in our viewing way and I think it allowed us to see everything much better and closer up. After the show we went back to our apartment and had chocolate cake; a perfect ending to a perfect day! Thanks for all of your birthday wishes and love. Thanks Todd for being my bestest best friend and sharing the day with me!!