Fall Fun!

Fall is a whole new experience for the girls. In Arizona there are about two seasons, summer and almost summer. My girls have never had all the fun that comes with jumping in a huge pile of leaves, so imagine the joy on their face when they saw that Papa had blown every leaf in the yard into a pile just for them! It is so much fun to see them experience these things for the first time and I think that maybe they get a little more enjoyment out of it being a little bit older.

In Loving Memory

Recently we had to say good bye to our beloved Gigi. We were so lucky to have so much time with her, especially the last 4 years that we were living in Arizona. Every October when Gigi came down our lives got to be a lot more fun. The girls went trick or treating at her house, we shared Thanksgiving and Easter together, but the best for all of us were the breakfast outings and dinners we shared weekly. We almost never missed a Saturday breakfast, many weekends making it on Sunday too and Wednesday nights were our favorite when we would bring dinner to Gigi's house. I am sure this last year Gigi got sick of eating pot roast, but it was Josie's favorite thing to help me make and bring along. Gigi always has things to keep the girls busy, they had their toy drawer in the kitchen with dolls and books, when that got old they would cook with her pots and pans and if all else failed there was the VHS of Snow white that was sure to keep them entertained (and quite) for at least an hour.

Over the last four years it was so much fun to get to know Gigi in a different way, in a different environment. Because now when we saw Gigi we weren't with family but we were always surrounded by all of her friends. (We were very popular in the 55+ crowd.) Gigi had the greatest friends, the holidays were shared with them and they became our Arizona family.

We knew this winter would be different, we had moved away from Arizona this summer to be closer to our family. In that way were were lucky, we got to spend one last summer with Gigi at her Minnesota house (as my girls call it) and the girls had a whole new experience and the one that Brian and I had loved for years before going to Arizona. Lazy summer days spent swimming at the lake, taking golf cart rides, and BBQ's at Linwood. We all miss our Gigi more than words can say, but are so thankful for the precious memories that we have from our special time with her. We love you Gigi!

Maggie is here!!

Margaret Dawn Grant was born on August 16th! She weighed in at 8lbs. 6oz. and measured 21.5 inches long! She is absolutely perfect and beautiful, just like her big sisters, who are totally in love with her. As you know Josie is the best big sister ever and Ellie must have been taking notes because she is so great with her. Still, almost 6 weeks later Ellie loves to hold her, hug her and kiss her, she even will sit and sing her songs and read her books. Maggie's favorites so far are Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star and Blue Hat, Green Hat. Josie is also happy to have another sister in the house and as always is mom's big helper. Our family is very happy and all living in the same house a gain. A few of weeks after Maggie arrived the girls and I headed to North Dakota to be with Dad and finally try and get settled into our new house.

Hugs and love from the Grants!

Our crazy life

Well, again it has been quite some time since I have posted anything, but this time I think I have a fairly good reason. Our lives are completely crazy! About a month ago everything was going along just fine. Then one day Brian called from work and told me that he had the opportunity to move us closer to home. The catch, we need to go RIGHT NOW! Mortenson has a project in Jamestown, ND rebuilding a hospital and they want another guy out there, but they need him yesterday. The bonus, going to this project transfers us to the Minneapolis office with Mortenson, meaning that when this project is done (June/July 2011) we will get assigned to a new project with the Minneapolis office and that means being home in Minnesota!

So we jumped at the chance. Never mind that I was 35 weeks pregnant. Never mind that we packed up everything and left in 2 weeks time. Never mind that we had no where to go or live once we got there.

So we made a plan. Brian would go to North Dakota, find us a place to live and go to work. The girls and I would go to Minnesota, live with Allan and Diane and wait for the baby to come. This was easy, I would go back to the Dr. that delivered Josie and then after the baby when we were all settled, we would all go to North Dakota.

So here we are, I am now almost 39 weeks pregnant. The baby is scheduled to come on August 16th. (One of the perks to having a scheduled C-section) The girls and I are hanging out at Grandma and Papa's house and loving getting to spend so much time with their cousins! Brian is in North Dakota and comes to see us on the weekends and everything is falling into place.

Life has been crazy for the last month, but we are so excited to be home. I have a ton of pictures but can't seem to get them on the computer here, so they will have to wait until we can get them up in North Dakota or Brian figures out why I am having trouble.

Ellie is 2!!

On April 28th our little Ellie turned 2! She was so excited to have a birthday party with her friends! Since Elmo is about the coolest thing in Ellie's world we decided on an Elmo birthday. I made her Elmo cake and we had her party at a local park with a bounce house for her and all of her friends.
Most of Ellie's friends are Josie's preschool friends and their younger siblings along with our usual Mortenson family. We are very lucky that we have become close with several families from Josie's preschool and often get together outside of school days. Also many of Josie's firends have younger siblings right around Ellie's age, except that they ALL have younger brothers! Ellie is the only girl!
All of the kids had a blast and the parents got to sit back and relax while the kids bounced and played at the park. of coarse it was one of the hottest days of the year so far so everyone was sweaty and hot by the end of the party. Good times were had by all and both the girls were asleep before the end of the 10 minute car ride home!

April 2010

April brought us lots of fun! First was a trip home to Minnesota. The girls and I planned an extended trip because we that the end of Brian's project was near and that always means lot of extra hours and night without Daddy. Which is very difficult for two Daddy's girls. So at the end of march we packed ourselves up and headed to Grandma and Papa's house for two weeks with Brian joining us for Easter weekend. The girls had so much fun hanging out with their cousins. Another highlight was a girls day out with Grandma Alice. I have never seen my girls have so much fun shopping! Ellie looked like a teenager digging through racks of clothes and pulling out things she liked. She was also the first to say if she didn't like something. With a large portion of their summer wardrobe in hand we went to lunch at Josie and Grandma's favorite place, Applebee's, with one last stop before heading home, Build a Bear Workshop where both the girls made very cute monkeys which they cuddled with on the way how and promptly fell asleep after a bust day at the mall.

Auntie Stacy took on the task of coloring Easter eggs with the girls, since Noah and Taylor were on spring break. The girls had so much fun hanging out with their cousins and doing their eggs and I even got a couple of hours to myself with no kids!!! (That almost never happens.)

On Easter morning the girls came down to discover that the Easter bunny had hidden all the eggs they had decorated and even left them very full Easter baskets. This was Ellie first year of really being able to find eggs on her own and she loved it.

After all the eggs were found and the baskets all pulled apart we got ready and went to church. Then it was off to Grandma Alice's for brunch and another Easter egg hunt.

Them back to Grandma and Papa's for quick naps, dinner and you guessed it ANOTHER Easter egg hunt!

This was the best we could do with the attempt of a group picture.

Now after all that running around you can see why I never have really considered my trips home a vacation!

Also in April Ellie turns 2!! (on the 28th) We are still in shock that out little Ellie Bellie is already 2, time flies! ( Her party isn't until this weekend so I will update with birthday pictures after that) We also finally moved Ellie into Josie's room and into her big girl bed the week before her birthday. This was a huge change for us because Ellie was always the easy one to put to bed. A little rocking in her chair and a few songs then we could lay her down and walk away and not hear a peep until the morning. Now Josie is always the first one to sleep and Ellie needs a little more attention. She is getting there though, it has only been a little over a week and she is getting better at falling asleep without someone laying next to her, but she does think it's really cool that she can get out of bed on her own. Just tonight I had to pull her down out of Josie's bed twice before she finally went to sleep. I was sitting here writing this blog ans I hear Josie's little voice, "Mom, we have a problem." and there she was as happy as could be on the top bunk! All I can say is, that's my Ellie, we wouldn't expect anything less.

March 2010

The biggest news we go in March came from our ultrasound appointment on March 19th. We found out that we are having another GIRL!!!

We couldn't be more excited!! Josie had wanted a baby brother all along and I kept reminding her that we don't get to pick, we just get a fun surprise. I was a little worried when I saw a VERY familiar picture on the screen that she would be bummed out that she was getting another sister. When the ultrasound tech said "It's a girl!" I saw Josie's face drop just for a second and then a HUGE smile and cheer for a baby sister. I have to say that my reaction was almost identical. My biggest concern is coming up with a name for this little girl. Josie was easy, Ellie was much harder and this one is proving to be the hardest one yet. I know that we will find something, I just hope it's before August. Got any suggestions? Send them my way!!

February 2010

February brought a couple of new milestones to the Grant house. The first one was that we bought bunk beds for the girls since we need the crib and Ellie's bedroom for the new baby coming in August. Josie was so excited about getting bunk beds and getting to sleep on the top bunk. She has slept in bunk beds before, but we weren't really sure how it was going to go when it was the real deal. She loved it and it even keeps her in her own room a lot more often.
About the same time we got the bunk beds I kicked Josie out of our bed. Knowing the my belly was just going to get bigger and there would be less and less room for her. The problem was that she had gotten so good and sneaking into our bed a lot of the time we didn't know she was there. She knew that climbing over Daddy was the way to go, he doesn't wake up for anything and she just snuggled right in and I wouldn't know she was there until I was falling out of the bed. So we set her up a place on our floor to sleep if she wanted to come in during the night, but with the bunk beds it is rare that we find her there in the morning. Part of it is probably because it is too much work to crawl down in the middle of the night.
The other big Grant family milestone in February was that Daddy turned 30!!! I waited for this day for 4 months, so he would stop giving me crap about being "old" since I turned 30 in October. We had a fun day celebrating Daddy"s big day. I think that it has been hardest on Brian's family who can't believe that "Baby Brian" is 30 years old!

February also brought us some more visitors, Anya and Krey! (Their parents came too) We had lots of fun visiting with them for a long weekend. We took them to the zoo ( I did say that's one of our favorite things to do.) and the Daddy's got some golfing in. Unfortunately Ellie got sick during their stay with pneumonia, but that let Josie have a special day to spend with her Aunt Michelle and cousins at Enchanted Island, a small amusement park, where the girls got to go on rides and even got a treat at the end of they day. It was so much fun to hear all about the fun day they had. (I'll have to get some pictures from Michelle and update later.)

That ended the fun in February. After Ellie got sick it was all down hill, Josie got pneumonia too and we ended up in urgent care and the doctor's office several times the last couple of weeks in February. After about two weeks of sick kids we were all healthy again and back on track. Thankfully all our visitors got were a couple of runny noses!

January 2010

In January we had visitors! With nobody knowing that we were coming home for Christmas our parents thought that they would come visit soon after the holidays. We tried hard to get them to postpone their plans with out making it obvious as to why we wanted them to wait. This actually lead to us telling my mom we were going to be home for Christmas because she just wouldn't give up. We didn't want to ruin our surprise so when Allan and Diane made plans to visit in January we decided to let it go seeing as we were going to be in Minnesota for such a short time anyway. While they were here we got to spend some quality time with Grandma and Papa and share some of our favorite things to do in Arizona. The girls favorite place to spend the day is the Phoenix Zoo, so we had to take Grandma and Papa there.

One of Josie's favorite things to do at the zoo is feed the giraffes. She taught Papa how to feed the giraffes.

We also took them up to Sedona to spend a day.

While they were here we also planned to have Josie's birthday party. She turned 4 back on December 22nd, and we usually have a party at home with family, but since we had so few days in Minnesota we decided to have our first Arizona birthday for Josie. Which was a lot of fun because she got to invite all of her preschool and Arizona friends to her party. She really wanted to have her party at Bounce U, so that's what we planned. We had so much fun jumping and playing! After an hour or so of literally bouncing off the walls, we had pizza and cake. Good times were had by all and mom didn't even have to clean up the mess, until she got home.
The only mess to clean up was the disaster in my kitchen from making Josie's birthday cake. Diane has always made her grand kids birthday cakes and does such a wonderful job. When I had Ellie I figured I was going to have to start to learn how to make cakes for myself since I never saw us being home in April for Ellie's birthdays and I didn't think it was fair that her cakes would never be as cool as Josie's. Well when Josie requested a princess castle cake I knew I had my work cut out for me. I spent a lot of time looking at other home made castle cakes online. Trying to figure out how they made them and what was the best design. and this is what I came up with. I have to say that I really had fun making this cake and I have to thank Brian for all his work too. He made the door and all the windows and even stayed back to repair one of the towers I broke in the car before we even left for the party. I thought I was going to cry! Diane did the adorable little princess dress cake and that was Josie's special cake!

December 2009

I am so behind in my blogging that I decided that I would do quick monthly updates to catch up and try to be better about finding time to update more frequently! So, here goes nothing!

December 2009 was an exciting month for our little Grant family. At the beginning of the month Brian and I got away for our first night ever away from our kids! Crazy to think that we have never done that, but living far away from your family (and babysitters) makes it difficult. (A big thanks to Mike and Gina for taking excellent care of the girls for us!) Anyway our first night without kids was in Las Vegas! We went to see Garth Brooks in concert and had a blast with our friends Lexi and Bill Jack. Right before we left, trying to be very responsible I found out that my very first trip to Vegas would not include any late night partying because I am pregnant!!! It was a great trip and concert.

This year we had said since the summer that we wouldn't be home for Christmas this year. It was just too much money and we also took into account that Josie has not has a healthy Christmas since the year she was born. With her asthma the winter is hard and traveling and crazy schedules have always lead to pneumonia and illness at Christmas time. The idea of not being home was sad for us. It was something that we said we would never miss, but we thought it was best for us this year. Well, that last all of maybe a month before we decided that we couldn't do it and starting planning our road trip home. The catch was we were not going to tell anyone that we were coming home. We would drive up and arrive on Christmas eve and stay a few days and head home. This meant that we would be on the road about the same amount of time that we were actually home, but we thought it was worth it. Of course the day we planned to leave there was supposed to be big storms our whole route home, so we left early only to encounter this:


This was the worst of the weather we saw. We were still in Arizona, about 2 hours from home and stuck on the mountain for about 3 hours before they turned us around and headed us back to town. We found out from friends who were watching weather and road conditions for us that all roads out of the state were closed but one and you had to have tire chains for 4 wheel drive for the state troopers to even let you through, but Grants never turn back. ( That's a family motto handed down from Brian's Grandfather) So we called and put some tire chains on hold at Checker auto and headed down the mountain, got our tire chains and headed on to Minnesota. We drove to Kansas City and stayed the night there and left very early the next morning to beat the weather coming our way. I think we were in the hotel for less than 12 hours, but we got some good sleep at least. On Christmas eve we arrived in Minnesota, to a very surprised family!
None of our plans to surprise our family turned out quite the way we planned, but everything turned out great. We were going to just show up at church, but because of the weather we arrived early and just decided to go to the Grant's house and get ready. Allan was shocked when we pulled in the driveway and Diane was surprised by two little girls when she got out of the shower to get ready for church. As we were sitting visiting with Grandma and Grandpa the girls were checking out their tree. They have a ornament for every Christmas with all the grand kids on it and Allan said to Josie that we needed another baby before next year so they could add another name on next years ornament. To which Josie replied, "Well, you know my mom has a baby in her belly!" There went our Christmas morning surprise!
The girls had so much fun with their cousins in Minnesota, we are so glad we made the trip home! Josie even had her first healthy Christmas in Minnesota, which lead to her first time really getting to play in the snow! She loved every minute of it. She shares a love of snowmobiling with her dad. She could have had him drive that thing around the yard for hours, and she did!!
Ellie on the other hand wanted nothing to do with the snowmobile, but loved the snow and playing outside just the same and we all had a great Christmas.