Cooped up in January

It's been a little while since I have posted because I don't have that much to tell. We have been so cooped up with all the snow. Ogden has got slammed this year. We have had too many storms to count. The record was the storm with 20 inches, but just a week later we had another 15. In between these storms we have had smaller storms that usually have 1-8 inches. Yikes! It has been horrible. I just really don't like snow. Since we are so cooped up I have been trying to go outside and play in the snow everyday with the kids. This past week we haven't been able to because the kids have had bad colds. Adin loves it though. No matter how long we are out there he doesn't want to come in. Meg is easy to get in the house because she always wants hot chocolate to warm her up.



We took Adin in for pictures and had a really great session. Brian came along which made all the difference. Adin thinks Brian is hilarious so we held his attention much longer. You can see all the pictures by clicking on this link. https://www.thesmilestation.com/home.asp?AC=LTTT0891103153TAR When it asks for your customer name enter Heather Droubay. They are all pretty cute.

Meg is no longer Meg or a puppy. She is now Star Rainbow. She made the name up all by herself. Apparently she is a magical princess. I have a picture of her as Star Rainbow, but I am not sure if it is appropriate to post on the web. She strips down to her panties, puts on her sunglasses and a necklace. She puts bracelets around her knees and wears high heels. She walks around talking in a soft high pitched princess voice about the magical things she is doing and a how much everyone loves Star Rainbow. It is adorable. She is quite the pretender. She will play for hours by herself pretending with her toys. I guess that is first child syndrome.


Adin is a jabber mouth. He has gone back to caveman days. He grunts all different tones and pitches and points at things. He does it all day long. I think he really thinks that he is talking. It is a little disturbing to think that he is mimicking what he hears from us all day long. Poor kid. He is at SUCH a fun age. I love it. I love to just watch him walk around with so much purpose going about his business of destroying the house. It is so much fun to be their mom.


Perhaps the biggest news of all is regarding Brian's Ph.D applications. We got them all in on the 15th. Yea it's over! It is sooo much work. Brian got a phone call from one of his previous professors from BYU last night. He said that Brian could expect to receive an email today informing him that he had been selected for an interview. To put into perspective how great this is, around 80 people apply to BYU's clinical Ph.D. program every year. The email said that they would be interviewing about 20 people and selecting 10. He made the first cut. In essence our chance of getting in to the program went from 8 percent to 50 percent. We are just shocked. BYU is one of the hardest Ph.Ds that we applied to and both of us seriously doubted we would even get an interview. In fact, we both thought we were wasting our money on the application fee. We have spent the last 24 hours trying to wrap our minds around the possibility of being back at BYU. We are also trying to keep it all in perspective and not get our hopes up. We won't hear back from the other four Ph.D. programs until mid to end of February. Brian will interview at BYU on the 15th of February. These are greuling interviews and last the entire day. We'll see what happens, but for now we are just grateful that he made it this far. We find out from all teh schools by the end of March and have to make any decisions about where we will be attending by the end of April. I will keep you all updated on everything.

I hope all is well with everyone.

December in a nutshell

December just flew by. Here are just a few of the many things that we did in the month of December.

This is us at temple square. This was a really fun family trip. Both the kids loved looking at the lights.

There were two trips to the mall and one trip to Brian's work to sit on Santa's lap. This is a picture at Brian's work. She ate the Santa thing up. We would use the phrase, "Santa's elves are watching you," many times throughout the month. We caught her peeking out the window quite a few times trying to see the elves.

We took the kids sledding at John Adam's Park. It was a lot of fun. Adin hates being cold so I sat in the car with him for most of the time, but we had to bribe Meg to get her to go home.

The pictures are from Christmas. Meg was soooo excited. Adin was more concerned with climbing and exploring (as usual). The highlight of the day was Santa eating the cookies. We set a cookie and a glass of milk outside her door at night. We told her that Santa would check her to make sure she was sleeping and would probably be hungry too. I told her that if she woke up and cookie was gone then he had come and if not then he hadn't come. Bright and early at 6:30 she came running down to our room. "Santa at the cookie." She was screaming this over and over and jumping up and down. Her excited voice in engrained in my memory. She had to run upstairs and bring down the empty plate and glass to show everyone before she was willing to start opening presents. It was so cute. I think that this Christmas was the best Christmas that I have ever had. Meg's excitement was contagious and nothing makes me happier than seeing my family happy.

Now we are on to the new year. Right now our thoughts are completely focused on getting our Graduate School applications in. They all have to be in on the 15th. Yikes! Adin is such a ham right now. Anytime he sees me holding the camera he says cheese or "eeeese" and gives us this totaly cheeser. It is so cute. It is making for tons of really cute pictures of him. I guess now is the time that I should take him to get pictures done.