Hi elmo. Congrats on the decision! My 2 cents:

When I went from my gripped XT to the 5D II, to tell you the honest truth, I never missed the grip - and I loved the grip on the the XT (still do!). The battery in the 5DII is awesome, which compensates a bit for the loss of 2 in the grip.

As for CF cards....It depends on how much you shoot in one sitting, I guess. I have 2 8GB cards and that's good for me right now, but I don't shoot tons of frames. An 8 GB card will only allow ~250 full sized RAW shots (~390 sRAW1 and ~520 sRAW2). I shoot 98% in sRAW1, 1% in full RAW and 1% in large/fine jpeg. Shooting HD video, its very easy to fill your card up. If I shoot a 3 min clip in 1080 HD its comes out about 1GB. Buy the biggest card you can afford.

You will love that camera!

Happy shooting.,

Damian