We had a wonderful Thanksgiving! It was the first time that we had hosted the Thanksgiving dinner. We invited our neighbors (The Herreras) who just had their first baby and my cousin Brittany and her husband. We split the meal between all of us which made it so much easier and cheaper. I was just relieved that I didn't have to cook the turkey. I do not like to cook meat. for some reason whenever I cook meat, I get really turned off to it and then I can't enjoy eating it. The only meats I can stand to cook are hot dogs and ground turkey so these are the only meats we eat in our home. Anyways, I was grateful not to be turned off to turkey on Thanksgiving. I mostly handled the pies which are my favorite thing to make. I did an apple, a cherry and two pumpkin pies. They were fun to make but it was a little different experience baking them. This year I tried a new pie crust recipe that had a ridiculous amount of butter in it but I didn't question it because it's pie crust, right?  well, whether it was the right amount or not, when I put the pies in the oven to bake on Thanksgiving morning, the butter in the crust melted and dripped off the pie like rain. In no time, the oven was pouring out smoke and we were opening all the doors and windows fanning out the smoke in an attempt to keep the fire alarm quiet. We put pans under the pies to catch the butter but it didn't stop the smoking. The  pies needed to finish baking though, so we endured the smoke and cold for a couple of hours till they were all done. I've never had that problem with pie crust before. In the end the crust was super flaky but I can't say it was worth the bottom of our oven getting coated with burnt butter. Oh well, live and learn. All the food was good though and we had a fun time with friends and family eating, talking and playing games.

This year, I have so much to be grateful for. I have everything I want and everything I need. Of course I am grateful for my beautiful boys and sweet husband but I would particularly like to focus on our situation that I am grateful for. Since we have moved back to Rexburg, it's been a learning experience for me and has helped me to discover my misplaced faith. Like everybody else, we don't got a very cushy bank account and because this year we just had our third son and a couple of other factors, I was very very stressed out. I was stressed to the point of not enjoying my family or life. I hated the feeling and wanted to change. Money was always on my mind and I hated thinking about money. I didn't want to think about money while I was in the hospital with our brand new son. Over time, I realized that my thinking had to change if I wanted to be happy again, more particularly what I thought about faith. Faith was something I could define but I discovered it was something I hadn't made a habit of practicing. The truth was, I was so scared and stressed because my faith was in money more than in God. I believed money would take care of us and supply our needs, not God. In other words, I trusted in the arm of flesh. I trusted in something finite and man made when what I should have been trusting in was something everlasting and eternal and that would never fail. No wonder I was so afraid. I truly saw how weak my faith was. God knew it too because for weeks it seemed like every lesson and talk in church was about putting our faith in God. He was trying to help me not be afraid. I started to focus on faith and try to find out more about it through the scriptures. Our bank account continued to shrink but I could feel my faith in the Lord growing as I learned to shift my faith from our money to the Lord. I slowly became less and less afraid and now I can say with gratitude that I am once again loving my life and having fun with my boys again. Life is happy once more and it's not because we have more money. I'm not saying my faith is perfect, but more that it is headed in the right direction now and I know that life will only get better the more I nurture it. I see now that if we weren't poor like we are, I wouldn't have been able to see this and redirect myself. God really does work in mysterious ways and I am so grateful for this opportunity to be poor and rely on the Lord for our necessities. He truly is our provider and the Founder of the feast during this Thanksgiving season.

 Voila, the setting for the feast. We got the leaf for our table so that we could fit more people at it. Of course I forgot to actually take a picture when everybody finally came and we were all together, so all I have to preserve this Thanksgiving memory is an empty table..... but at least its a clean empty table?

 Christmas decor

Just some cute and fun pics

 It takes the boys awhile to actually fall asleep but we usually don't mind if they goof around as long as they stay in their room. This particular time, we came in after they had fallen asleep and found Benny with underwear over his pants. Wild times. 

 Yes, Ephraim is wearing underwear over his pants, he insisted on it after seeing Benny display it from the wild night.

So I'm back tracking quite a bit but better late than never. These are pictures from some of our travels during the summer. We traveled down to Arizona for Nathan's internship with his cousin, which didn't turn out and we ended up traveling back to Washington. I learned from this experience that I do not like the heat as much as I thought I did. I love living in mild climates and I love having distinct seasons. I also love having vegetation around and after Arizona, Kennewick seemed like a lush rain forest. It was a fun adventure to have though and we got to spend time with Lisa and Jake and the girls which was by far the best part of the trip. They were so kind to let us invade their home while we tried to look for a place to live. Of course, we couldn't find a place to live, which was the reason we decided to leave. Nathan still wanted to give it a go so he drove me and the kids to Las Vegas to catch a plane back to Kennewick and he stayed for a month more. I found out that a restroom on a plane is a very very small place to change a diaper when you have two kids and a big pregnant woman crammed in it. Of course the kids stayed awake during the whole flight and managed to fall asleep just as the plane was landing so that I had to carry a sleeping Ephraim and drag a very groggy and grumpy Benny off the plane. Don't get me wrong, i'm not complaining, I'm just amused at life's little ironies. They make it interesting. I also experienced one of God's tender mercies on the plane. I was scared to go on the plane alone with the boys but as I was boarding the plane and picking a seat, a young man sat next to us and explained that he knew my husband and had actually taken a class with him at CBC and was now attending BYU-I studying construction management. When I heard that he knew my husband, I felt like there was a bit of Nathan there sitting next to us helping me out with the kids. The young man was so nice. He gave the boys a little plane toy to play with and bought us water and offered to pay for any other snacks from the snack cart. Nathan actually met him again when we came back to BYU-I and gave him a coconut leaf he had carved to show our appreciation for watching after me and the boys.That little incident really showed to me that the Lord was watching after us even though, at the time, everything seemed like it was going wrong and things wouldn't work out. In the end, things worked out better than we could imagine. Sister Beecroft generously and kindly offered her basement apartment to us for the summer, which was only two houses down from my family's house and my grandma hired Nathan for the whole summer to fix up her yard. I got to see Nathan and my family whenever I wanted. It was a perfect summer.

We passed by these cool rocks on the way to Arizona. 

There were some rock dwellings there too. We read on an information plaque that these dwellings got started when a woman's car broke down along the road there and instead of getting help to fix her car, she decided to settle down and live there for awhile so she built these rock houses and I guess other people gradually joined her. That is so bizarre to me. That would be the last thing I would think if my car broke down on the side of the road. There are so many interesting people out there.

Our little car that carried all our possessions for the summer. She served us well but we decided to sell  her at the end of the summer to get a van we bought from Nathan's parents.

This was on the way back to Idaho for school. We stopped at a plane museum. I think Ephraim enjoyed it especially since he's more into planes, trucks, and cars than Benny is. Benny is more of a dinosaur and animals guy. They're both so different.

Today we woke up to new fallen snow. This isn't the first time it has snowed this season but the boys are always excited when they wake up to a fresh white world outside. I get excited too, even though most people seem disappointed when it snows. I love the snow and I wouldn't want to live anywhere where it didn't snow during the winter season. Whenever it does snow, I find myself thinking of my dad a lot. I realized that it was my dad that taught me to love the snow. My dad is the biggest kid I've ever know and I don't mean that in a bad way. He would get excited about the snow and loved to go sledding with us kids. He would take us to the golf course and sled for hours with us. Or he would build an igloo in the backyard with a plastic bucket. I don't really remember him ever building a snowman, but it seemed like he always built an igloo. I loved being in the snow with my dad and I have a lot of memories with him in the snow so it seems so natural to think of my dad when I part the curtains in the morning and see a smooth, softening layer of snow coating everything. I realized as I  looked out the window and thought of him that my dad just loves water, whether it be a solid or a liquid. He loves to swim in it, scuba dive in it, canoe on it, sail on it, ski on it, skate on it, sled on it, build with it, what ever. That's why when I picture the ideal place for my dad to live, it would be an island, because he would be surrounded by water. I'm so grateful for my dad, he is one of the best men I have ever known. So in honor of him and just to carry on the tradition, I built an igloo with the boys. It felt good to build an igloo again and the boys loved it. I can't wait to go sledding too. Thanks dad for all the fun times in the snow. 

all bundled up

 Asher is 10 weeks old today! He's come a long way already and I can tell too. He feels a lot bigger and heavier in my arms and he very quickly out grew his newborn clothes. He grew a lot quicker than I remember Benny growing but he has the same build as Benny. I think he'll be a very tall guy. Here's a little show of pics to show how far he's come.

 His first bath at home

 His many faces

This is him on his 10 week birthday

Our beautiful Asher Barrett Robles was born on August 29, 2012 at noon. We now have a baby for every meal. Benny was our breakfast baby, Ephraim our Dinner and now Asher came for lunch to complete it. I was so excited to have Asher that I couldn't sleep the night before the surgery. I was just so excited to see him. I got up and walked around the parking lot and then read a magazine and eventually fell asleep. My mom had driven up from Kennewick and arrived at one in the morning so she could watch the kids for us. The next morning, we got the call from the hospital that they were ready for us and we excitedly left. We found out that the doctor who would be delivering Asher was actually our bishop in our new ward. He had been away on vacation for a month and had just arrived home the day before my scheduled surgery, so I was going to meet our new bishop on the surgery table. He actually peeked over the curtain when I was all prepped and ready and welcomed me to the ward right before cutting away. I was so scared while they were prepping me. I always am no matter how many times I go through with this but I was so grateful to have Nathan there. He comforted me and calmed me down. I truly needed him there with me. The medication made me throw up and feel dizzy but then they gave me some other stuff and I felt so much better. I love love love modern medicine that can ease my discomfort at such a time like that. Then I felt all the pressure leave my abdomen and I heard Ashers little cry for the first time and I cried. It was such a beautiful sound, a new little baby boy that would change our lives forever was here finally. The doctor held him over the curtain so that I could see and he was as beautiful as he sounded. All I could think of was how grateful I was that he was finally here and how grateful I was for the doctors and nurses that brought him here and for the comfortable hospital and facilities and technology and medicine that allowed me to have this moment in such comfort. I felt so blessed. They wheeled me away to recover and I waited for Nathan and Asher to come. When Asher finally came, I eagerly held him. He just lay there with his eyes shut, sleeping soundly and it was wonderful just to sit there holding him and listening to him breath. I was completely exhausted and tired but I was in heaven.

My mom came with the boys later that day and Benny and Ephraim were just thrilled to see Asher. We gave them some gifts and told them, they were from Asher. They visited everyday while I was in the hospital and each time they came in, they would want to see Asher first before anything. They just loved having a new brother. Nathan and I were very grateful that we could have the first couple days of Asher's life alone with him. It gave us time to meet him without the distractions of Benny and Ephraim and we really needed that. I was so glad my mom came down to help out with that. The boys loved having Oma around all day. What a great, fun, involved, and loving Oma they have!

It has been so fun watching Benny and Ephraim grow and their different personalities slowly shape over the years and now I can have the joy of watching Asher grow. Life just gets better and better.

 This is how big I was just before the big day

 Just before surgery

 Another red head!

 Meeting for the first time. Love at first sight.

 Weren't we just married? 

 The expression on Oma's face says it all "What, I'm old enough to have 3 grandchildren"!?

brotherly love