Girl in a Whirl: Three more receptions, an Eagle project, Disneyworld and a light festival.

So if you are only interested in catering posts, you can just look at the beginning! This reception was actually for a friend of mine that does nothing but serve other people. She has been so wonderful to us that I asked if I could help with her daughter's reception she was doing herself. They chose these wonderful mousse parfaits, and kept the whole thing pretty simple, just doing three kinds with a lemonade bar. She bought and or made everything herself, and I just got to put it together and keep it pretty.

You know what I hate? When I get a great shot of the table and only notice the garbage can in the shot after I get home. I may buy photoshop just to edit out garbage cans.

Little lemonade bar.

Peanut butter cup parfaits.

The key lime was my favorite.

The chocolate caramel didn't layer as sharply, but was extra delicious to make up for it.

My partner had a job at the Springville Art museum this month too. She was asked for a waffle bar, and I won't post any more pictures but this one since you have seen this quite a few times on my blog!

We always have a blast working together on these jobs. Something about the frantic pace makes for good friendship? I don't know.

This was the next one, at a reception center up north a ways that used to be an old farmhouse --Audrey and I split this job up down the middle. She did the mini desserts, and I did the antipasti.

They wanted quite a bit more meat than I was used to, but it was a good thing they asked for it because their crowd really ate most of it.

The mini desserts were gorgeous as usual.

I don't know what I thought of this venue. There was a fantastic kitchen to work out of, but the outside seemed a little small for the size crowd a regular reception needs. The parking seemed a little limited too. It was charming overall though.

My Kai finally put the finishing touches on his Eagle project this month. He had a good group putting his nutrition kits together for hungry school kids.

The kits when done filled up my whole car twice. 300 kits.

The food bank goes through this many kits in just a week or two. So much need out there.

As a contrast...boy this was an awful segue, Jeff and I went on our anniversary trip to Walt Disney World. I have always wanted to go and have never been. We have never felt we could pony up the money to take everyone, so Jeff was nice and let this be our trip.

We loved the Everest version of the Matterhorn. I thought all of the Tibetian decor was charming. That is usually my favorite thing about Disney --they create a whole environment for you to immerse yourself in and you can pretend you are there.

The world of Pandora was just overwhelming. The avatar ride? Where you are flying on the bird/dinosaur things? Made me cry it was so beautiful. There was smell, sound, motion, music, 3D visual --I was there! I really felt like I was flying!

The safari was more than I expected. I didn't understand that they really had almost all of the animals from the African savanna.

Even Rhinos! After reading "The Last Rhino" I didn't know if I would ever see one in person again.

The nostalgia factor was a winner like always. Small World. Just like when I was small. I liked that the Florida version didn't have the added in Aladdin and Little Mermaid etc. It stayed the 1970's over in Florida :).

Out of all of the "lands" we liked Epcot the best.

We took the extra greenhouse tour and were so impressed with the technology.

Mission to Mars though? I will never willingly go on that again. Apparently I will never be an astronaut. One dream (I never had) is dead. I was so grateful that the ride ended when we got to Mars --that we didn't have to fly back home again I almost cried with relief. I was motion sick for a couple of hours after that one.
We were sad we didn't discover the world village part (what is that called?) until we went over there for dinner time. It was the food and wine festival so that was cool, by that time my stomach had settled and we tried food from everywhere (a strawberry creme brulee??? oh my goodness!), but we only went inside the Mexico building, and after that I wanted to see them all and we were close to closing time. Next time I want two days at Epcot.

Tia's favorite Disney movie was Tangled, and some brilliant entrepreneur decided people would come if they duplicated the light festival Rapunzel sees on her birthday. They were right. For our date night one night in September we went to one at Utah lake. They had a live band and food trucks (but not enough food trucks --the lines were too long for us), and each entry got you a little lantern kit.

We wrote messages on each side to people we loved who had passed away.

Then sent them out onto the lake.

It was the most beautiful thing when they were all lit. No need to worry about the ecology either. They were taken care of the next day and not left out there to choke and kill fish or anything.

September is usually the best biking month of the year in Utah, perfect weather and dry roads. This year though I got cheated out of it, although my loss was nothing to the damage we had. There were two big fires here in our area. The air quality was horrible for much of August and September. I only worked out inside, and was kind of worried about the 100 mile bike race I had scheduled in September.

The night before the race the air still seemed awful and I decided not to risk the damage to my lungs. My friend Brenda was braver though and still did 80. I met her at the finish line. A few weeks later after the rains came I did my own ride alone. It was actually kind of cool. I picked my own course and stopped and got a personal pan pizza as fuel mid-way.