MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Well, here is a little update from the Seminario family!
Fernando is working as an administrator and teacher at Paradigm High School in Sandy and is finishing his graduate degree at the University of Utah with a Masters of Public Administration. He is also having thoughts of doing a joint PhD in Educational Administration and Policy with the idea of working at the college level. He is a very busy guy right now but he is still a really great daddy and a wonderful person.

I (Sharon) am still teaching advanced composition but ONLY online now which is nice. I have six ideas in my mind right now for really great books but I haven't written one word of any of them. That's one of my new year's resolutions. I had Samuel in March and he and Miranda are the most fun I have ever had, even on crazy days.

Miranda is almost 2&1/2, and she enjoys pretending. She is always pretending. So, I guess even if my kids don't get my looks, I've still got some strong genes in there somehow. Today when I woke up she told me I was Shang and she was Mulan and Sammy was "little brother," Mulan's dog. It is not rare for her to change characters fifteen times a day, or to remain in character for days in a row...even through sleep and meals and Church. So she's pretty fun. She just learned her letters and has a lot of fun with billboards and mail and other things with letters on them. She also loves rhyming and making up words that rhyme with words she knows. And making up songs. (She just came in while I am writing this and told me I'm Cinderella and she is my fairy godmother.) She loves nursery and playing with other kids, she loves family and holidays, she likes reading and her movie box, and fruit and food that tastes good but isn't exactly good for you like frosting,butter, and chocolate. She says the funniest things, and, did I mention this?, she LOVES pretending.

We call Samuel the man-child or the Alpha-male because since he was born he has embodied the sterotypical male. He's about nine months old and He LOVES eating, blondes, wrestling, conquering things like stairs and standing, playing in and eating dirt, attacking people, yelling in war-cry manner, he's stinkier than Miranda was and more fearless...we laugh whenever we discover a new alpha-male quality. BUT he is the sweetest boy in the world. He is always smiling; since he learned how to smile that smile has been a constant. He brings us so much joy...I cannot help but be happy when I see his little smiling face with only two bottom teeth. What a blessing he has been to us!

We bought a house in west Salt Lake City (Taylorsville really) and we are really enjoying our ward and fixing up our house. It's perfect for us right now. We feel very blessed to have shelter, food, truth, and love in our lives. Who could ask for more?

MERRY CHRISTMAS from us...we hope to hear from anyone who visits this site!

The Elves' Birthday Dance

It was Nancy's birthday today, so we sent her a little message. I thought it was only right that I posted it here, too, especially since the program randomly selects each person's order and made Fernando a girl body (a shimmying girl to boot) and me a man. Sammy is the funniest, though. I can't get the link to work for some reason, so you might have to paste this into another window. Sorry!
http://www.elfyourself.com/?id=1294234016

I had to post this awesome picture

Well, let me just go on record as saying that my kids have the best aunts and uncles. I'm highlighting the uncles today. This was over Thanksgiving, and my brothers-in-law actually re-donned their Halloween costumes just for Miranda. I love them. That's Eddie the scarecrow and Smore or Cesar the Lion.

It's the most wonderful time of the year

Yes, it is true. The holidays have been upon us and will continue. We went to California and had lots of adventures, and I have a slew...slough...sloo? of wonderful pictures to post. For now I will only say that the yulesome twosome and I were listening to Christmas music over breakfast a few days ago and Nat King Cole was singing "O Tannenbaum" and Miranda put her hand over her mouth and put on her "That's so silly I have to laugh but I'm putting my hand over my mouth because it's just too silly" face and said, "O TINY BUM!!! Oh tiny bum?!!" We laughed and laughed and I didn't correct her.
Yes I will post more soon, but first we were sick and then Thanksgiving in CA and now we are in the throws of grading and submitting finals and I have been less than prompt. Miranda is grading a bunch of coloring work by her dolls and Sammy has a huge final in drool-ology. So, yeah, just give us a break. MERRY CHRISTMAS.

Look what we found in the leaves!

The Belnap family came over to our place and helped us with yardwork. Today a speaker in church mentioned President Eyring's recent conference talk:

"When our children were very small, I started to write down a few things about what happened every day. Let me tell you how that got started. I came home late from a Church assignment. It was after dark. My father-in-law, who lived near us, surprised me as I walked toward the front door of my house. He was carrying a load of pipes over his shoulder, walking very fast and dressed in his work clothes. I knew that he had been building a system to pump water from a stream below us up to our property.
He smiled, spoke softly, and then rushed past me into the darkness to go on with his work. I took a few steps toward the house, thinking of what he was doing for us, and just as I got to the door, I heard in my mind—not in my own voice—these words: “I’m not giving you these experiences for yourself. Write them down.”
I went inside. I didn’t go to bed. Although I was tired, I took out some paper and began to write. And as I did, I understood the message I had heard in my mind. I was supposed to record for my children to read, someday in the future, how I had seen the hand of God blessing our family. Grandpa didn’t have to do what he was doing for us. He could have had someone else do it or not have done it at all. But he was serving us, his family, in the way covenant disciples of Jesus Christ always do. I knew that was true. And so I wrote it down, so that my children could have the memory someday when they would need it."

I loved that he used the phrase, "he was serving us, his family, in the way covenant disciples of Jesus Christ always do." We both have families like that. Fernando's parents just help us and work like crazy when they come to visit helping us with the house and kids, so do his brothers and Nancy...well, with Nancy, whenever someone asks me, "Where did you get that?" or "Did you make that? It's so cute!" I have to give credit to Nancy. She uses her talents to help me be a better mother than I would ever know how to be. My family are just the same. I could not have had a better example of service and selflessness than from my parents and my siblings (new sister included). Well, you can see it in these pictures. I hope that I and especially our children can glean from their example the way President Eyring suggests. I'm writing it down with that hope.

My husband the punk

It was crazy hair day at Paradigm High School where Fernando administrates and teaches. He won in the faculty/staff category. Narly! Whoa, for a dude who's almost thirty he's totally rockin! Sweet. (Yeah, I know, I'm getting carried away, I'll stop now.)

Sunday Sleepers

As usual, Mommy is awake to take this photo of three sleeping beauties.

Funny little thing

Miranda still cracks us up. On Sunday Daddy was making grilled cheese and he asked me, "Honey, do you want a grilled cheese?"
Miranda said, "Or do you want a boy cheese?"



Another day, we were down eating on the plaza at Temple Square with Pa (Grandpa Belnap) during one of the last warm days of fall. Miranda stopped eating, looked around for a minute, surveying the lovely grounds, the temple, the Joseph Smith Memorial Building...and said, seriously,

"Pa, are you in charge of this place?"



She was saying one day, "That rhymes!" She sounded so proud of herself and she really likes to rhyme so I said, "What rhymes, sweetie?"

"Me."

"Me rhymes with what?"

"Me."

True.

She's obviously very brilliant to name such a close rhyme as "me" with "me."



She's also had some really sweet moments lately. I was shedding some tears and I told Miranda to come here. She said, "Why are you crying, Mommie?"

I said, "Do you know how much I love you? Mommie doesn't like to do her work on the computer sometimes and it makes her sad when she has to do that instead of play with you.

She looked at me an said, "But you don't have to do your work right now! Right now you just need to cheer up!" Then she sang the "When you chance to meet a frown song" for me. I couldn't hire a better therapist.

A little halloween magic

We had a great halloween. I've tried to make this little slideshow below for more halloween photos. Thanks McKenzie because I stole the slide show maker thing from you. The only hitch we had this year on halloween is that our kids were terrified of my brother! You'll see why.

Seminario Halloween

Hanging Out

My sister was "Hanging Out" for one of her halloween parties. I love this picture. I think her acting really captures the emotions a piece of clothing must feel while hanging in the closet.

Taking a Ride

We had a fun weekend which included a stay in an amazing cabin a relative of a relative owns, and a visit to Lagoon. A fun memory from the cabin: Miranda made me go into the woods with her and sing, of course, "Into the Woods." I don't know the words so I sing my own made up ones but she likes it so much that I actually remember the same wrong lyrics each time. I like them so well by now I'm considering sending Sondheim a rewrite. Ha. We saw "Into the Woods" at a little community theater probably a year ago and Miranda still loves thinking about it. I feel like Miranda's human i-pod sometimes. I have to be able to sing whatever song she's ever heard at any moment. I have to be on top of my game. Or just make up my own lyrics.

I think everyone who sees this picture and was raised in Utah probably has the same picture of themselves at this age. So, we have played our part in a Utah rite-of-passage for Miranda now. Sam didn't get to come to Lagoon; he stayed with grandma and her broken leg. My favorite Lagoon memories are Miranda's face when we went around the first time on the "Puff the Magic Dragon" rollercoaster...pure life-threatening panic, and Xiao Yu giving me scars from grabbing my arm so tight on the "Tidal Wave." Before we went, Fernando was trying to explain to Miranda why the place was called "Lagoon." He was halfway into it when she interrupted him and said, as if to spare him the effort, "Like a mermaid lagoon?" Uh, yep.

The cast came OFF!

Miranda got her cast off! I was afraid she was going to be sad when they took it off, but she wasn't, and the big old saw they mow through the cast with...she called it the "tickle machine" and was just laughing the whole time she got it off. PHEW.

The best part was how she kept wanting to show everyone her arm so she could say, "Look! DISGUSTING FLUFF!"

An Outing

We went to the Gateway mall with my sisters to get Patrick a birthday present. I've decided to appreciate walking around the mall for the mere fact that I can update myself on what I'm supposed to be wearing now, so at least I am aware of my unfashionableness and don't continue to get outdated in ignorance.

We had lots of fun. Miranda ate Katie's sandwich of course, well, I should say she ate the turkey bacon out of Katie's sandwich, and Sam tried to attack all the women's belts within arm's grasp. One day I will look back wistfully at the ability I have now to simply go shopping with my sister and sister-in-law. It is so nice to be close, even for a little, little while.

By the way, we met up with my old roomie Jen Suflita and her steward (she tends a little boy named Jack).

Scrub-a-dub-dub

I can't come up with text to match how much I love these pictues. I wonder if we'd all be happier if we splashed in the tub every other day?

Cornbelly's Corn Maze

We went to Cornbelly's Corn Maze with the Belnap family a while back. We saw a scary mask-wearing guy at the front so I tried to shield Miranda from seeing him, but she did. And then she'd say, "I don't want to see that guy with the scary mask." Then she'd keep craning her neck to see him.

It made me think about myself and the rest of us and how we're also that way sometimes. We focus so much on what we want to avoid that we end up paying more attention to it than if we didn't worry about it at all.

We had fun even though we didn't choose the teeny-bopper haunted maze. I'm glad we're exposing my sister-in-law Xiao Yu to one of those really random American activities: trying to get lost down a bunch of paths mowed in dead corn.

Sammy loves the stairs

He's only 6 months old, but he thinks he's a little llama who can climb anything. If Miranda hadn't stopped him here, he would have gone all the way up. He does all the time. He loves doing all of his own stunts.

Teeter-Totter

Everybody is playing at the Zoo playground at Hogle Zoo in Salt Lake City. It's hard to tell who are the children and who are the grown ups.

Fun at the Zoo

Sam (the model)

Here is Sam working the camera. He thinks he's so cute (we think he is too).

Napping with KT

You can see just how much Sammy enjoys shopping with the ladies.

Miranda Eating OREOs

Mirand loves to sit in her corner of the office and be productive. It's hard work to carefully separate each Oreo cookie so that she can lick up the creamy middle. Of course, being the little multi-tasker that she is, she can do all of this while still watching a moive.

Witches in the Neighborhood

The kids and I went with the Belnap girls and grandma Baugh (later joined by Patrick and Fernando for lunch) to Gardner Village to see the witches. Miranda wouldn't get too close.

Purple Cast

This afternoon the helpful doctors and nurses at Primary Children's Orthopedic center took more x-rays, removed the splint, and put on this lovely cast. Miranda was a very good girl, except for the part where she scream-cried the entire time they were putting on her cast. I think it was because they were holding her down and holding her arm in a way that made it hurt. The technical term for the break is a supracondylar humerus fracture. It's the part of the arm/elbow toward the upper arm. She'll have this cast on for 3 weeks before they x-ray her again. We want everyone to know that she picked purple (probably the least dirt-showing color of all) all on her own (which we are very happy about!). Now she'll just have 3 weeks of sponge baths and staying out of sandboxes. *Note the Dora sticker for good behavior.