A December we'll always remember

Merry Christmas Daddy! Taken last Christmas with my sweet daddy and some of his grandchildren (mine and my sister's children)



Admittedly, Christmas was not the same this year. The same things happened, but it just doesn't feel the same.
I wanted to share with you our Christmas, and remind you to EACH DAY take time to treasure the ones you love, b/c you may not have them the next day.
As I asked my children what they wanted for Christmas, my middle child, our only boy, said to me "my pawpaws back". Where does one go from there?
So onwards and upwards we tried to go.
We took the Scouts to the Nursing home to visit the elderly there, the ladies were so touching. Tears streaming down their faces at the beautiful sound of innocent children singing. The boys handed out gifts to each person there, and had a wonderful time doing it.



Somewhere in here, we had SNOW!! This never happens in Louisiana, especially snow that sticks!! At 5 am my little one said, it's a miracle mom!!




Then came the school programs. I will warn you, in our school gym, a decent picture is not to be had. No matter what I did, I couldn't get a decent pic, and I wasn't up to fighting with the settings. Gabe LOVES school plays, Sarah loathes them. The kids did a great job with the performance, it was really cute. And Ms Sarah was student of the month!!







We took them to the zoo, they SO wanted to see Santa....they refused to get anywhere near him other than Sarah, who we bribed!!! But..the zoo was nice anyways!





Then a trip to city park to see the lights...here's a cajun version!





Christmas Eve brunch was held out our home for my family. This is where this blog gets really hard..and I will gloss over here and just say again, treasure them, every moment. God bless my beautiful sister and awesome husband, who give me strength of heart and soul like could never be gotten elsewhere.

Christmas morning came, with the wonderful smiles of my children. The most glorious thing is to see a child smile, there's nothing better. The opened their gifts and enjoyed each one...and after much searching found where that sneaky Santa left their present, a Wii that they have wanted since they came out. They've been playing it ever since I think.






But I do believe Ms Molly was as excited as the others!!






In the coming month we celebrate Ms Sarah's birthday. She shared her birthday with her awesome Paw Paw Bill. She will be 10 years old, it's amazing how fast time flies. We'll be posting pictures I'm sure (if she ever decides what her party is to be).
I look forward to the New Year praying for a more peaceful one, a happy and healthy year for everyone and lots of emotional healing.
This year I give thanks for my family, and my friends, who hold me together in times of need. I have been BLESSED with awesome friends, you know who you are.

May God bless your New Year....and give it peace and love.

Heather

Say it isn't so Mr Bill

It's with a new sadness I write this blog. Last week, I thought that I could feel no deeper sadness, today I know I was wrong.
Today was taken from me the most beautiful man there ever was. The man who raised me to be the woman I am today. The man who loved me like I was his own, and gladly shared me with my biological father, knowing that each of them held their own special spot in my heart.
This time last week, I thought the healing process would begin. Tonight, I sit wondering how all of this could happen, and if my heart will ever heal. My bounty of blessings, my two Dads, have been both taken from me in one week. It makes one wonder, it wavers ones faith, and shakes them to the core.
On December 4th the world lost a treasure. Those of us who were touched by him were better off for it. Those he leaves behind mourn him painfully, although they know he is in a far better place than they. The things he gave me in my life were not things that could be given a tangible value, but things that will live with me forever, and live through my children, and all of his grandchildren. God must have needed a powerful force in Heaven to have taken him from us. I know that somewhere, right now, his mother is welcoming her "Billie" with open arms, and his heart aches no more for his lost loved ones. He is rejoicing in the arms of his maker, his mother, his father, a daughter and a wife that passed before him.....and watching over so many that he left behind.
Mr Bill (as he was known by most everyone) will live on in our hearts. I take comfort in knowing that God gave him to me for the time that he did, and deep, mournful pain that that time was so abruptly ended. I know not what to say to even begin to explain how I feel, but felt the need to get some of it out. I thank all of my friends for their prayers, and hold my loved ones close to my heart - we will all need each other so much in the days, weeks, months and even years to come.

A painful blessing

In my life, I am blessed. I have many people to love me. I have a mom, 2 dads, a step mom and a step dad, as well as many sisters and brothers. Today, with great sorrow, I said goodbye to one of those dads.
The story of my fathers is inconsequential, but for the sake of confusion, I have my biological dad, my dad who raised me and my step dad, who loves me like his own. It's a blessing combined to have the three of them.
Three months ago, the very last thing I would have thought was that right now we'd be preparing for a funeral. Two months ago, I was preparing to have 2 years left to spend with my biological father, and 2 weeks ago, I began to tell him goodbye, b/c we found out that we only had weeks.
The blessing of having many people to love you is that you feel so supported in every sadness of your life. If only it could make the pain less, is all I keep thinking.
My biological father was who he was. He was a loving, groucy, country, fishing, beer loving, hammer swinging man. He was not perfect, and neither am I. He did love me, and I will always love him, nothing could ever change that. The pain the he endured hurt me more than anything in my life, and when our prayers of his passing on Friday morning around 5 am were finally answered, I felt as though God had lifted a huge weight off of my heart.
My heart hurts for me now, but not for him. He no longer hurts, he's not longer agonizing to breathe, no longer can his body betray him. I can see him in my mind, sitting with my Gramps, perhaps wondering where in Heaven you can get Busch....
My mind can't help but wander forward to the days that will be to come, how I will feel as the pain of watching him pass goes away and the pain of missing him fills that void. I have vowed to remember all of the good times, have long forgiven any bad, and will teach my children about their Gramps right along side loving their PawPaw Bill and PawPaw Ray. The final moment that they spent with him he was able to pull from somewhere in his tortured body a smile a laugh and some comfort for them, so they will not remember him in pain.
I pray for my stepmom, for all my brothers and sisters. I stand proud of my brother Robert, who I had always seen as a child. He stood strong for his mother and our sister, and gave them the strenght they needed. I'm proud to call him my brother. I pray for closure for all of us. He was a man with many children, may each of them carry a happy memory of him to their own children as they grow.
I ask that you pray along with me for those he left behind, but rejoice with me that God has taken his child away from this painful life into a life of everlasting Glory and painlessness. May we meet again some day, all of us, past a rainbow in the sky, and live forevermore.

Starting the Christmas Joy!

We have ALOT going on in our family right now that's emotionally hard, so we decided to start Christmas EARLY and share the joy.
It's a yearly tradition with me and the kids to make ornaments. You will see several installments of them this year I'm sure. But..today I was shopping online and saw this ornament that a store had for sale and thought..HMM..I have all the things to make those, so we did!

Here's our inspiration:



Well, we didn't have the elongated bulbs, but I did have round ones. So..for this project you will need:

• Round glass bulb, that you can fill
• Some white sparkly stuff (we used white snow sequins)
• Sharpies
• Wire
• Something to make earmuffs with, we, being the caking family, used fondant with tylose in it, but you could use clay, you could use small foam balls cut in 1/2, you could use playdoh

First, take the top off of your ornament and fill part of the way with the "snow"
Then..draw on your face with the sharpies, this is where personalities come into play!
THEN..put on your earmuffs with a drop of glue and stick the wire into them







Make sure you write your name on the back and the year!!

Have fun crafting,
Heather and the kiddos!!

The finished cakes

These are the cakes that my friend, her DIL and I did for her daughters wedding. They did an awesome job on the wedding cake, which they did all by themselves!! I made the flag, emblem and seabee on the grooms cake, and they did the cake before I got there. I'm so proud of them, and I know they were proud to have done that for their family! It was a beautiful wedding also! Congratulations Jessica and Anthony!

Grooms grooms grooms

Seems this is the week for grooms cakes! I am helping a friend work on a grooms cake for her son to be, as well as having a grooms cake order.
My friends SIL to be is a Navy Seabee, and she wanted to show that on his grooms cake. Although she has done many cakes, she had never done what needed to be done to make the bee, so we worked on it together.

We made a royal icing plaque of the bee, as well as making an edible image plaque of the Naval Emblem. Tomorrow we'll finish the cake, and she'll finish her wedding cake, how proud she must be to make a wedding cake for her own daughter!!

I'll be sure to share those pictures with you.

My order this week was rescheduled from Gustav, when poor Baton Rouge took such a hard hit. Our groom wanted to honor his puppy, as well as LSU, his favorite school. So..I made a chocolate chocolate labrador to go on top of his cake, and made a collar for him with LSU colors and all.

The lab took about 1 1/2 lbs of chocolate to make and smelled divine!! Chocolate cake with buttercream icing and some fondant doggie bones. Really fun to make, and I hope they enjoy it thoroughly!!

Thanks so much for sharing these cakes with me. I'm not doing many cakes right now...due to a sick family member. One day, when I have more energy and less emotion I'll blog about that. Please continue to pray though for him, he needs all of them that he can get.
Heather

An award to pass on

Jacque at Daisy Lane Cakes graciously gave me this award this month. Seems there are some rules for this award:


Find 5 blogs, of any kind that you love to read.
Write a post about the blogs you picked, linking back to them.
Make sure you let them know you gave them an award.


So...I'm handing this award over to three blogs that I dearly love, and watch daily. One for each of my obsessions in life. My kids, my cakes and my photos.

First: Kids (they always come first)
Mata Mania, Carla, and awesome mother and friend. (She also makes a mean cake and cookie and shares my Disney obsession.) Most days you will find Carla hanging out with her awesome kids!

Second: Cakes (I have to tell you, these days I go back and forth between cakes and my camera coming 2nd...but this lady is DEFINITELY top on my list of cake obsessions. Not only does Sharon at Sugaredblog make AWESOME cakes, but she's a killer friend and my partner in crime on many occasions. If you have a cake obsession, her site www.sharonssugarshack.com, will definately help you out, and if you have an obsession to MAKE perfect cakes, her DVDs at www.sugaredproductions.com are the bomb.

Third: Pictures (hence the "lens" part of my blog name) This woman is a HUGE inspiration to me, her style of photography speaks to me! If only I could learn to take pics like her, I'd be a happy camera girl and probably NEVER mention cakes again. Wild Spirit Photography is just an AWESOME blog to watch for inspiration for pictures, so she's recieving the award on the merit of being spectacular behind the camera!

Thanks again to Jacque for the award, she rocks, btw. And..Jacque, any time you're out my way, you're welcome to some more of that jambalaya. I thought of you the other day when I made it for my cubscouts!

Daring Bakers Challenge Oct. 08

PIZZA!!

This was my first month doing the Daring Bakers Challenge, and I got in on a good one, as my family LOVES pizza.
First, thanks to Rosa at Rosa's Yummy Yums for hosting this month's challenge.
Our challenge was pizza and toppings. So...as we have a wide range of tastes in this family, I headed to the grocery to hunt up some FIXINS!! NEVER take two young girls with you to pick out pizza toppings.
The pizzas we wound up with :

• pepperoni and black olives, 1 thin 1 thick crust (these would be the "kids choice award" pizza)
• prosciutto, sun dried tomatoes, basil (on a traditional red sauce, traditional cheese)
• shrimp, spinach, artichoke heart, prosciutto (why waste the stuff) (on an garlic olive oil base, with tomato basil feta cheese)
• apple crumble (homemade apple pie filling and crumb, on a unbaked crust) drizzled with a basic glaze

I LOVED this dough. It played well thick and thin, rose right, had a great texture and handled fairly easily. Sadly, there are no pics of me tossing, I already had my camera dropped once this week, so I was NOT allowing my remaining lens to be broken by an underage cameraman! Tossing doesn't work so well for me, I am a hand to hand, pulling my fingers apart as I go girl, then pop it down, pull it towards a circle and let it be!
Here are some befores of the pepperoni and the prosciutto basil

My little helper kneaded for me, as you can see, but by the time we were headed to the fridge she was pooped. She was also my chief pepperoni spreader on day 2
(the ones she didn't pop into her mouth).

I cut my dough into 6, so I could make small pizzas, and we had some leftovers,
even with 5 of us eating in this house.

I found my right baking temp to be 425, on a preheated stone, got a great crust on them, nice and sturdy, but not tough. I will say this is the ONLY time I've seen pizza crusts eaten in this house that had no toppings on them, poor poor birdies tomorrow, no snacks.
Here's a view from the oven:

I hope you enjoyed our foray into the pizza world!! We enjoyed it, and will def do it again, but I do have MUCH more appreciation for Paul, "THE PIZZA MAN" at our favorite pizza joint!

And..just to make you drool, a few "afters" of the pepperoni and the apple cobbler!

A trip to the firestation for the cubs, and a plea for prayers

October is National Fire Safety Month so for our pack meeting this month, we met at the firestation. My hubby is District Chief of a local department, so we chose to go to his department for our meeting instead of the small one here in town. So..we met at Fire District 12 with our pack for some fire safety learning and fun! It's fun for me, b/c I know them all so well, they're like our extended family, so I love to see the kids having fun with the guys.

Here are some of the drawings we got from our boys:



We also had a fire safety poster contest, they boys did awesome with their drawings. The winners recieved some fun prizes to use in future Scouting adventures.



Capt. Pierre went through fire safety with the boys. This man was MEANT for this job, he's great with the boys, and gets all the information they need in while staying on their level. Op Matt put on his gear for them, and showed them what a firefighter in gear looks like, so they know not to be scared, and Op Kyle also put on his gear, so they could hear the noises that the air mask makes, so they wouldn't be scared of that either.
Then the boys got to go through the safety house, which is a mobile unit, equipped with a house, that they can fill with smoke and show the public how to react in case of fire. After that, their FAVORITE part, Op Clint let each child got to spray the fire hose!!




We finished up with a tour of the trucks and each boy got some goodies to take him with them. We'd like to thank Fire District 12 for the awesome job that they did for our pack!!

Fire Safety is VERY important. Here are some fun things for your children to do while learning about fire safety. Some other things that you and your family should make sure of:

• plan an evacuation route in case of fire
• place emergency contacts where your children KNOW who to get in touch with in case of emergency
• check your smoke detectors often, a good way to KNOW your batteries will be good is to change them with daylight savings time changes
• practice fire drills
• visit your local fire station, they will be happy to show your children around

I don't often ask pubically for prayers, but this week I found out someone very close to me has terminal lung cancer, and I would like to ask that you remember him in your prayers.

Playing Indian, Scarecrows and the police!

We've had a BUSY week!! Lots of pictures to share of all. We've had Indians, and Scarecrows and Police, OH MY!!



Today was dress up day at the barn, for Halloween, and Sarah decided to make Dibbs and Indian horse. I didn't get to get pictures of her wearing her costume, but when I got there she and Martha Ann were taking turns riding him bareback, so I did get a shot of her on him then. Thought I'd share her fun for the day with you guys.




During the week this past week Gabe's teacher asked me to help them make a scarecrow for the front of the school for their classroom, so early Monday morning one of the other student's uncles and I set about our first scarecrows ever!



She's raising her hand to ask a question, how's THAT for being a good student! The kids enjoy being involved in these projects, I just wish they had gotten to help more, but we had to do it while they were in class learning.

After school on Thursday we had our Bear meeting for the week. This week, Folsom's finest came to visit us. Chief Killingsworth and Sgt. Magee are two officers from our local PD, and we were lucky enough to have them come talk with our boys about safety, and about the jobs that they do as police officers. They did a GREAT job with our boys, and we thank them for the time they gave us, the boys loved it!



While we were doing our police unit, we taught our boys about fingerprinting, and printed them all as an activity.



If you have NOT had you child fingerprinted for the national database, let me take this moment to suggest that you do. It's such an awesome tool for police officers should your child be kidnapped or run away or be lost. You can contact your local police station for details on having this done. You can visit this website to order a free at home kit, and then have it registered: http://www.klaaskids.org/printathon.htm

We hope you are loving Fall! Have a wonderful weekend, The Truetts!

Life from the outhouse...one cake and one real!

What a great weekend, and BUSY!! We went camping with the cubscouts, but first I helped my awesome sis out with my BIL's 50th party and made her some food and a cake! I have to say, my sister is SO level headed, b/c the cake fell over on the way to the hall, and she CALMLY fixed it, I'da prolly freaked out. I guess the stake wasn't driven far enough into the bottom board. She fixed it though, with giggles of Katrina - izing it by putting a blue tarp on it, although I don't think she actually had to go that far! I've been promised an "after" picture, but here is a "before" for you.

The story goes, Greg does these fun gifts for us for Christmas, and the outhouse is part of it. He might kill me for posting THIS picture!!



He is SO normally calm and peaceful, but MAN does he have a wicked sense of humour! That outhouse is in their yard, it's their pump house, hence the cake being an outhouse. FUNNEST cake ever for me I think! For you cakers, it's 1 1/2 12 inch cakes cut into 1/4s and stacked, with foam core between each two layers. The board is fondanted and dusted to TRY and look like concrete. It's not perfect, but it's cute I think. It's all buttercream except the top, which is fondant, and all the color is airbrushed on. I just marked the lines with my bench scraper.



And NOW for camping!


We had a great time!! Sleeping in a tent with Abi is TOO funny. At 2 am on Friday night, she was walking around the tent going wooo....do you see my shadow.....it was hilarious, but not. Let's say the next night I took some "help" to get to sleep, and Abi's shadow didn't bug me at all.

Our boys got to earn lots of beltloops and they had a blast. We had lots of help from our parents, and all in all it worked out. The OUTHOUSE part of the trip, the BATHROOMS BACKED UP Saturday night, NOT good with 50 people, but we made it. AND..the water was cold cold in the showers, but again, we made it. The boys played, and did skits and played and fellowshipped, and all in all it was a great weekend. We even managed to cook all of our meals together and eat together, which I think is so important for the boys!!

I'll share pics of that later, I have to resize and all. We all looked so great in our new yellow activity shirts, and I'm thrilled that after just ONE year and 2 months in existance our boys have come so far!! My heart and soul goes into that pack, so it means the world to me to have them do well, and hurts me if people say negative things about them, so I was so pleased to have them so well recieved by everyone, and see the families working together towards such an awesome goal.