Disney Magic

For now, enjoy the pics, more and the stories to follow!

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.

More Family Traditions!

The day after Thanksgiving while all the other people are out shopping our family tradition is to break out all the Christmas decorations. We put up the tree (we have to have artificial because Brian is allergic to the real ones.) and put of the Dept. 56 village and hang the stockings and Gigi's Santas. The girls are both old enough to help decorate the tree this year and they both loved hanging the ornaments on the tree. At first Ellie wanted to take them off and put them back on over and over, but eventually she got the idea. Josie is a pro at this by now and she likes to see all the ornaments and likes to find special places for the ones that are hers. Here's Josie showing Ellie the ropes:
The other traditon that we started last year was letting Josie put the star on the top of the tree. She loves that this is her special job, but once Daddy lifts her up over his head she has a hard time getting the giggles under control to actually get the star on the top of the tree. I suspect that by next year there will have to be a conversation about who gets to put the star up, but we will either take turns every year or maybe the star will have to go up twice!
After a long mornings work the tree was beautiful and the girls were very proud of their masterpiece. The tree is my favorite thing at Christmas time. I love to turn on the lights and turn off every other light in the house and just sit in the room with the tree. Josie and Ellie love this becasue we have a button to push to light the tree instead of having to plug it in. They both learned very quickly how to turn the tree on and off and they love to turn it on every morning.

Thanksgiving and family traditions

Ever since we moved to Arizona we have always had Thanksgiving here. Last year was the first time that we decided to host Thanksgiving and things went so great that we had an even bigger gathering of our Arizona family this year. The total guest list topped out around 20! We are lucky to get to share this special time with Gigi (Great-Grandma Grant) since she lives here 6 months of the year. We also have Grandma's good friend Dorothy who is like an adopted grandma to my girls, I am a firm believer that you can't have too many grandparents! We also had 3 families of the Mortenson family join us and it was a wonderful day. The kids played outside, the boys fried about everything they could think of in the turkey fryer: funnel cakes, snickers, reeses peanut butter cups, and donuts (AKA tubby toast). All the girls shared their favorite Thanksgiving recipes and nobody went home hungry!


One of our family traditions at holidays is to make bread from scratch. My mom learned from her mom, my mom taught me and now Josie has become quite a good helper.
She helps knead the bread and she has become very good at it. So much so that I don't really have to take over when she's done. She is building up her muscles and she doesn't ever seem to get tired! She pulls and pushes and pulls and pushes until I tell her to stop.
Ellie is thinking that maybe next year she will have to get in on this action too. Lucky for me, we have always had to make 2 batches so there can be a bowl for each of them next year and we won't have to fight.
One of Josie's favorite parts of making bread is to watch it rise. Here she is with her bowl over flowing! She asks about every 10 minutes to check on the bread to see if it is getting bigger. I keep trying to tell her that if she waits a little longer she may be able to actually tell the difference in size! Josie loves helping in the kitchen no matter what I am doing. I am so glad that she has really taken to making bread because it was one of my favorite things to do with my mom at the holidays and now it becoming one of her favorite things too. Hopefully one day she can share this tradition with her kids.

Ellie is a super swimmer too!!

Ellie has had to tag along to Josie's swimming lessons all of her life and she is always wanting to get in the pool too. So we decided it was time Ellie finally got to get into the pool and learn to swim like her big sister.

If you know Ellie you know that she is a little on the shy side. It takes her a while to warm up to people and some people, try as they may just can't win her over. Her Daddy is her favorite guy and no other guy has quite measured up yet. (This makes Daddy VERY happy and he hopes it continues well into her teenage years!) So when I found out her teacher was a guy, I was a little skeptical about how well this could possibly go.

It turns out that being in the pool far out weighed the fact that her teacher is a guy. And eventually she really grew to like Jon and now refuses to swim for any other teacher! I guess this is an obstacle that will be tackled later!! Ellie is doing excellent in her swimming lessons and I think we might have another little swimmer on our hands. She has to take a break from swimming because she has accomplished all of the requirement for her level 2 class, but level 3 is not a parent/child class so until she can wait her turn and not jump off the step randomly, she is sidelined from going any farther. Here are some pictures of Ellie's favorite things at swimming:

The Popcorn song!

Hey, There's Jojo!! I want to swim with the big kids!!

Monkey walks

Happy Halloween!!

Well Halloween has come and gone and we sure had a lot of fun! I would love to fill in all the things that we have done since our trip to San Diego, but sadly now that I have some time my hard drive is in Minnesota trying to salvage my pictures! So any way we will start from here and I will vow to be better about backing up my photos and updating my blog!!

One of our favorite family activites has always been carving pumpkins. When Brian and I were in college we would get the fancy carving kits and carve elaborate designs. Well now with two kids we and they don't have as much time or patience and so we settled for 3 funny (not scary, per Josie's request.) pumpkins and one cute little monster.

Josie dug right in a helped clean out her pumpkin. She has become such a little scientist asking all kinds of questions about the insides, making lots of observations that the guts were squishy, wet and slimy. She asked about the seeds, and then proceeded to tell us about how farmers plant seeds and they need water and sun and time to grow into pumpkins. She even designed her own pumpkin face which I gladly carved out for her.
Ellie wasn't quite as gung-ho about digging right into a slimy pumpkin so we put in all out on the table for her to explore at her own pace. She touched it a little but was much more into checking out the pumpkins all lit up and ready to go. The monster was her favorite.
This is the first Halloween that Ellie has gone trick-or-treating. Last year if I remember correctly she slept through most of Halloween and barely got to wear her costume. This year she was a very funny little clown. She loved her costume and even though she is not a fan of strangers who want to talk to her in the store and there aren't many people that she would just walk up to and talk to the idea of getting candy pushed all fears aside and she was a very happy little clown running from one door to the next.
Josie has been deciding her own costumes for the past couple of years. This year she wanted to be a princess and she wanted her dress to be pink. So a couple of months ago we started looking for patterns for Grandma Grant. We like to get our requests in early since they have to go the farthest. Josie picked this dress because it has 3 skirts and she is 3! Well she was by far the prettiest princess that I saw all night! The picture almost doesn't do it justice. This is the princess dress girls dream about. The one you just have to spin and twirl in all night long. She got so many compliments on her dress people could not believe that her Grandma made it. Her preschool teacher told Josie to start talking to Grandma about her wedding dress!

Here are the girls all ready to hit the streets!

Our neighborhood is the place to be for trick or treating. We easily had over 100 trick-or-treaters, I ran out of candy by 7:30 and I had bought 10 bags. I had to break into the snack drawer in the pantry and Ellie's loot just to make it until 8:00! I knew we had a lot of kids in our neighborhood, but I had no idea. It was also nice to meet some of our neighbors because nobody ever is outside in the summer, but on Halloween people sit on the porch waiting for the kids and the cul-de-sac at the end out or street had the road blocked the BBQ set up and a regular old party going on! I am already excited for next year.