Animal Control Officer Daniel Grant

It has been a crazy month!  Daniel finished his vet school applications and started a new job- Hurray! 

After passing a background check and a polygraph test,  Daniel is now an Animal Control Officer for the city of Idaho Falls.  This job is a huge blessing, and we are so grateful that he found it.  He works a lot with the animals, which is good for vet school.  He is full time, is paid well and has benefits! 

We have never had a "real" job that gave us benefits, so we are very excited.  We will not have to pay for our health insurance while he is a city employee, and the coverage is amazing.  That means saving a lot on maternity and baby medical bills.  Hurray!

Daniel works 4-10 hour days a week, which means he has three days off.  We are trying to think of a good project or hobby for him to work on on those days (suggestions would be great!).  Until then, he is very good at cleaning up my messes around the house.  :D  He is also good at making messes...

Though he is good at the domestic chores, Daniel decided that he needed to go do something manly this week. So he borrowed my bosses truck and went for a drive and successfully found the muddiest road around.  He was proud.

My little sister is getting married in December, so I have been busy helping with wedding plans.  It has been a lot of fun to spend time with my family.  We are very excited for Shaleece and Zane.

I have been getting steadily rounder.  I am convinced that our little boy is going to be a great soccer player.  He has been practicing his kicks more and more frequently- every once in a while he kicks hard enough that you can see my belly move!  We are very excited and very nervous for him to be here in 3 months.

The Dawn Trio Reunion ~

During high school I had 2 really close friends.  We did a lot together.  We called ourselves the Dawn trio because we all had Dawn as a middle (or second half) of our names.  LeaDawn, Jessica Dawn, and Kelsey Dawn.

Jessica lived in Wales for 9 months, so I had not seen her for over a year!  We got together for a little reunion this weekend.  We went to the canyon in Twin and hiked around a bit. 

Me and Daniel

Jessica and Jon Fulcher

Kelsey, Josh, and McCade Hawkes

It was fun to hang out together and talk about the good old days!

It's a Boy!

Daniel and I went to the doctor on Thursday and found out that we will be having a little boy!  We are very excited. 

That will even things out on the Grant side of the family.  There will be 4 boys and 4 girls.  However, things are a little lopsided on the Brown side.  That will make 6 grandsons, 0 grandaughters.  :D

It was very neat to see our baby moving around.  He looked so cute that I just wanted to hold him, but we have another 20 weeks to go before we can hold him. 

I am definately showing now.  I already feel large- and the largeness has just started!

The Great Outdoors

We decided to go camping to celebrate the long weekend and enjoy one of the few warm weekends left before cold hits.  It was just Daniel and I this time.  We found a nice little camp ground right at the base of a beautiful hike at Palisades Creek.

We made dinner with just fire and tinfoil this time!  We did not pull out our grill until breakfast.  It was delicious.  We had Tinfoil dinners, corn on the cob, and hot chocolate.  For dessert we made cobbler.

This was our cobbler experiment.  Daniel did not want to make a dutch oven full of cobbler for 2 of us, but I really wanted cobbler.  So I made individual cobblers in make-shift tinfoil cup things.  Daniel thought I was crazy, but it worked!

Yummy!

Saturday morning we went on the hike to the lower lake.  The majority of the hike follows this creek up a canyon.  It was a very beautiful hike. 

Daniel and I at the Lake- We made it! Only 4 miles to go back to the car...

The hike is about 8 miles round trip- which is definitely my max right now.  We were exhausted by the end, but we had a great time. 

We decided that we definitely need a bigger tent for next summer.  There is not room for a pack 'n' play in our current one. 

As most of you know, we are expecting a baby in February.  Hurray!  Here is a picture of me with our little bump.  This was a few weeks ago, so I am a little bigger now.  We should find out this Thursday if we are having a boy or a girl!

Our Camping Adventures

We went camping this weekend by Cave Falls in Yellowstone with some of our friends from Rexburg.  Our camp site was right by the river which was very pretty.

 

We were grateful that we were able to fit the grill in the car with all of our stuff, it sure makes cooking easy!

Thanks Sheldon for the camping kettle!  I love hot chocolate when I am camping. 

We saw a black bear on our hike.  It was only 15 yards in front of us on the trail!  Daniel was all prepared with his pepper spray.  Luckily it was a healthy bear who was just as startled to see us as we were to see him.  He disapeared into the trees before we even thought to take a picture.

The second half of our hike was a marshy area that was highly infested with Mosquitos.  We got eaten!

A few weeks ago we spent a weekend in Island Park with some friends at Daniel's old bishop's cabin.  It was a very relaxing trip.  It was so nice of Bishop Price to let us play with all of his toys!

We got caught in the rain while we were riding.  We were soaked!

Our friends Kasey and Kyle were with us.  We drove up to the top of Sawtell.  It has an amazing view of Island Park.

We are trying to enjoy the summer while it lasts.  You never know when the weather will suddenly turn cold in Idaho.  Only a few more weeks and we might start seeing snow!

I Slaughtered Him!!

Daniel always says that I never win in Settlers of Katan.  The truth is that I usually win about every other time.  This is proof of my ability to beat him.

I am the orange.  I had 3 cities and 3 settlements.  I also had the largest army, the longest road and a victory point.  Daniel had 5 settlements. 

It's Growing!

I am happy to report that our garden is growing beautifully.   This is one of our tomato plants.

It has 3 tomatoes! The biggest one is about 2 1/2" in diameter.  We are very excited for these to ripen- hopefully it is not while we are gone to California in a few weeks!

This is our flower garden that is at one end of our vegetable garden.  I can't believe how well all of the flowers have grown.

Here is a row by row intro to our garden.  This is the Pepper & Tomatoe row. We have one bell peper that just finished blossuming and has a few tiny peppers growing.

This is our Lettuce, Onions, and Carrots & a few more Tomatoe plants.  Our carrots did not come up very thick, so we will have to plant some more.  We are very excited that so many of the onions survived.  We thought that the worms were going to kill them all for sure!

This is our Broccoli, Zucchini, and Yellow Squash.  We have one tiny zucchini growing!  Hopefully it grows fast.

Look how well our corn is growing!  It is about 6" tall now.  Soon be a little forrest.  I hope it grows good ears- I love corn on the cob.

Below the corn are the bean plants.  They were not as succesful.  We have 7 or 8 plants that look like they will make it.  Hopefully we have enough to can some.  Green beans are not my favorite, but they are pretty easy to can, and very easy to prepare, and Daniel enjoys them.

That is our garden.  We are so glad that our manager let us dig up our yard to put it in!