My baby is 5 years old!

Caleb's 5th birthday was this weekend, and I still can't believe it has come and gone. How can it be possible that my first, sweet, little baby is already 5 years old? Five just seems so old! I know for those of you whose babies are even older, it might not seem this way, but I feel like he is entering a whole new phase of his life. He's becoming a big brother to #2 little sister, he's starting to play sports and kindergarten is just around the corner. What's next--dating and graduation??

The time has gone by so fast. And Praise God--his first five years have been filled with so much love, laughter and happiness. He has brought us more joy than we ever thought possible. I am so proud to be his mommy, and I only pray his next five years will be just as wonderful and memorable as these past five. Some of my favorite pictures of my big boy...

Who knew such a little person could change your life so much!

He's always loved spaghetti :)

Always a cowboy at heart

So precious!

My little helper

The best big brother ever!

It's a hard job being this cute. :)

Such a ham...but with a bright future!

Another precious prayer

As christian parents, we all pray for our children to know God and His word. In fact, our prayers for our children take so many forms--praying for their health and safety, their spirits and souls, their futures, etc. For Dawson and me, it has been the most awesome blessing in the world to see God answering those prayers a little bit at a time. We feel like Caleb, who-unbelievably-will be 5 years old within the week, has at least begun to grasp some of God's attributes. And by the grace of God, I've seen him display some beautiful characteristics of God's spirit, like mercy and compassion. I don't say these things to brag, but instead to give glory to God for how He is working in our little son's life. An excerpt from tonight's prayer that brought much joy to my heart....
God, it makes me so, so sad that some people don't have any beds, or food or money. Please give them all those things. And God, you are the biggest, biggest man in the world and the boss of everybody--EV-RY-BODY. And thank you for Jesus and that he died for all of our senses. :)
Thank you, God, for teaching and molding our children, in spite of their completely flawed parents.

Some recent pictures of our little blessings...
Our breakdancing gangstas :)

Cheesin' it on our cousin's cool, new 4-wheeler

Fun times with our cousins from around the corner


And the 3rd one on the way (Huge, isn't it? and shaded to downplay the stretch marks :)

A little late...but, Christmas 08

Sorry for the cheesy title. I know that I'm a little behind the times for posting Christmas pictures, but c'est la vie. We had a crazy, but awesome Christmas. We travelled a lot. First to Hutto, then back to College Station for less than 48 hours--but an important 48 hours because we had our first Christmas Eve night and Christmas morning in our own house, then up to Ft. Worth on Christmas day and then off to west Texas to Menard to spend a couple days at the "Big ranch". It was a crazy two weeks of living out of our suitcases, but it was worth it to spend all that time with our families.

We did absolutely love doing our own Christmas Eve and Christmas morning. On Christmas Eve, we had a service at our church, which of course was totally awesome, then we came home and got to do all of the fun stuff to prepare for Santa. We baked cookies, set out 'reindeer food' and finished a fun new tradition called "What God wants for Christmas." It is this awesome little book and kid-friendly nativity scene that I heard about through my MOPS group. It was such a blessing to us. For 7 days, you open up a little present each day and read a part of the Christmas story. The whole time, it continues to ask the kids to think about what God wants for Christmas, and then on the 7th and final day, you find a mirror in the bottom of the last present, and the story talks about how the ultimate gift God wants is you. Caleb was totally into it, and I loved the message that it sent to him.

Anyway, we had a great time. The kids LOVED their little gifts from Santa (which I'm totally convinced that 'santa' is really for adults because it is more fun being santa than just getting gifts from him) and we were blessed with many wonderful things from the rest of our family. Here are some of my favorite pictures...


1 of the 65 pictures taken in front of tree for Christmas card--but the hard work paid off!


My two favorite gifts!


Making the cookies for Santa!


What God wants for Christmas...


Setting out the cookies for Santa..but contemplating if we really want to sacrifice two whole cookies for him. :)


The long awaited castle from Santa (with 'good guys and bad guys' :)


Ellie's gift from Santa, a Cabbage Patch now named "Princess" (I don't know who is more excited about her, Ellie or Mommmy :)


Singing Happy Birthday to Jesus, with some celebratory monkey bread on Christmas morning (so delicious--thank you Missy and Jan Carder for the recipe!)

The Beginning of the 30's

So, I am now officially 30. I can't say I feel any more mature, wise or responsible, but I have now entered the decade that seems to be defined by these words. I celebrated the momentous occasion by going on a surprise getaway with my boyfriend. He had pre-planned all of it, and I just got to go along for the ride. It was AWESOME! I hate leaving our kids, but I do love getting to spend some one-on-one time with my favorite person. It feels like these are the only times that I can focus all my attention and affection on him. I love the way it feels when we rediscover how much we like each other. Anyway, we had a fabulous time in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The best parts (that can be mentioned on a blog :) were the awesome Mexican food and getting to be in the beautiful, snowy mountains. The one other notable thing we did was finally create our "Bucket list"--ya know, the list you are supposed to have of the things you want to do or accomplish before you kick the bucket. Pleasant thought, right? But we both liked the idea of coming up with these 'goals'. We each brainstormed five, and then decided to combine them into our "Top 10 list". Some of them are serious and spiritual, others are silly and fun. So, here it goes....the Bucket list for Dawson and Michelle Skow:
1. Live to see all of our children come to Christ, be baptized and have a growing faith
2. Go on a mission trip to a foreign country
3. Take swing and salsa dance lessons
4. Live to see our children happily married to godly people, and become grandparents
5. Live out in the country
6. Learn to and go scuba diving
7. Have a healthy and active lifestyle, and be happy with the conditions/size of our bodies
8. Die having a reputation of being overly generous (with our time, money and resources)
9. Become finacially free--without debt and with adequate savings
10. For Dawson to become a songwriter, and for me to sing those songs with him :)

And to end this thoughtful blog entry, some pics of the trip...

Our Little Snow miracle

Yes, that's right! There was snow in College Station, Texas this morning!!! I had the delight of waking up this morning by a kiss on the cheek from my sweet son, saying to me "Mama, let's go play in the snow!" This was the first snow that Ellie has ever seen. She wasn't nearly as excited as her Bubba, but we all had a good time. Just wanted to share some pictures....
"Funnest thing ever"--throwing snowballs at Daddy

All bundled up!

Our miniature snowman :)

Indescribable Joy

You know those moments when your cup overflows, and your joy just spills out through your tears. I was blessed to have another of those moments tonight. It was my turn to put our precious daughter to bed. We started out by reading two 'princess books' and then I prayed for her. After I was done, she asked, "My pray?" (I'm going to try to convey her sweet, two-year-old words through as much phonetic spelling as possible) So of course, I said sure. She starts out emphatically-"Un God" (her version of Dear God) and then closes her sweet eyes, bows her sweet head and then starts to whisper a long strain of inaudible, unintelligible words. As I listened to her, my heart swelled with joy--almost so much, it hurt. I knew that even though I couldn't understand a word she was saying, that God knew exactly what she was telling Him. There is nothing in this world more pure and beautiful than the prayer of a child. Eventually, she said "ahmin". And she looked at me with that, "aren't you proud of me, mama?" face. I tried to explain to her how happy it makes me when she prays. Of course, we wrapped up our bedtime with some good renditions of "Patty Cake" and "The Itsy Bitsy Spider"--or as Ellie calls them, "Pie Cake" and "Bug". :) Thank you God, for allowing me to be the mommy of my two unbelievably beautiful and precious children. I could never deserve them, or the joy they bring me.

Bodily Functions

Before becoming a mom, I never thought that my life would be so preoccupied, even revolve around, bodily functions. But as many of you moms know, when you have a child, their bodliy functions--spitting up, burping, tooting, peeing, pooping, etc--become a big part of your life. You obviously clean up after them; you observe, dissect and even sometimes journal about them; you even talk about them...sometimes during casual dinner conversation. Well, in light of this truth, I have to say that I now find myself blogging about them. I apologize to those who are still sensitized to this subject, or even feel that they are above such topics--but I must announce......ELLIE POOPED IN THE POTTY TODAY!!! Yeah! Hooray! Praise the Lord! We have been waiting for this event for months now. My sweet girl has loved sitting on the potty for quite awhile, but she has never--until this day--done anything while sitting there. FINALLY-this morning, the potty miracle occured. From all of the celebratory shouts in our house, you would've thought we won the lottery. :) Even her Bubba was excited for her, and joined in the jubilation. Of course, this is only one isolated event, but at least we've made progress. I just felt it appropriate to make note of such a landmark. :)