Will you look at that - gas finally went below the $2-mark.  I never thought I’d see this day.

Maybe someday I’ll get into blogging regularly… But apparently today is not that day. Just as an update, and as a taste of future blog posts I hope to write in order to catch up, here’s the latest from the Spurlock Family of Two and a Half:

- Yesterday we had another ultrasound for Baby Spurlock! He’s quite active, and apparently likes the taco position (with his feet up by his head). We got a bunch of cute profile pictures of him, and even a 3-D image of his face. Medical technology rocks!! And yes, he is very cute, even after only 5.5 months in my belly.

- Jake has been working on finishing our basement since about mid-summer. We’re lucky to have such awesome family to help out. We’ve had my parents from California, my sisters at BYU, my brother in Arizona, Jake’s dad and brothers (even Ty in Logan), his uncle, and even a few friends and neighbors come help out. The sheetrock is about 70% up and after that it’ll be mudding/taping, painting, finishing work, and carpet. The exciting part about eventually getting the basement done is that only THEN will we be able to start on the baby’s room! I guess I keep putting baby things off, thinking that we still have PLENTY of time. But time is definitely ticking away…

- We can’t wait to go to the Bain’s house in Arizona for Thanksgiving! Maren (our cute little neice) turned one on Election Day and I am a terrible aunt because I never even called them to sing Happy Birthday. That day I happened to be confined to my bed and my bathroom - puking my guts out for the first time EVER during my pregnancy. I guess I can consider myself “lucky” that I haven’t felt more sick with the baby…

- Work is going just fine and regular for both of us. Jake loves what he’s doing with Petomundo, especially the part where he gets to work from home. I’d be lying if I said that I’ve never come home at 6 p.m. and caught him still in his PJ’s (or underwear). But he’s working hard and he enjoys it all, so that’s great. I’m still just doing my thing at XanGo - I’ll work at least until the baby is born, and then we’ll see what works out after that.

And that’s a wrap for now! I know this is a very common blog cliche, but I PROMISE TO POST SOME PICTURES SOON! Not too many of me (who wants their pic taken when they’re pregnant??), but something for your viewing pleasure. Tootle-ooh.

P.S. I thought I should just mention that this has been a BIG week for me - Monday I went grocery shopping for the first time in a LONG time (2 hours and $200 later… yipee); yesterday I cleaned the kitchen, made dinner, baked 5 batches of cookies, AND folded 2 large loads of laundry; and today I blogged. Watch out, productive world, here I come!

Here we have The Bain Girls in all their 80’s coolness.  I must have been about 7 years old.  (In case you can’t tell, I’m the one on the left.)  I’d like to point out my purple “earings” - since I didn’t have my ears pierced until later in life, I would press my hair barettes onto my ears as hard as I could and stand really still so they’d stay on at least for the picture.  Creativity at its finest, eh?  And compliments to Carl’s Jr. for the free sunglasses.  Anyone else remember when those were all the rage?  Good times…

I stole this picture off of my sister’s blog (Thanks, Laura).  And since I’m stealing pictures, I might as well post this one, too.

I’ll see if I can find that pumpkin cape to use again this year.  It’s probably one of the few costumes that will fit a pregnant belly…  And who doesn’t love plastic vampire teeth?!

For all the California voters out there who can make a difference, I encourage you to become informed on the consequences of voting for or against Prop 8.  I sense that there are so many people on both sides who are dangerously uninformed - voting FOR Prop 8 simply because their church says so, or voting against Prop 8 simply because they think it will affect gay rights (which it won’t - that’s what “civil unions” were created for).  We are so blessed to live in this free country where we have the opportunity to VOTE.  Please do not take this privilege lightly - take the time to become informed and truly UNDERSTAND EXACTLY WHAT YOU ARE VOTING FOR.  That said, this is my blog and a place where I can say what I want, so I’ll speak my opinion on why Californians should vote YES on Prop 8.

WHY VOTE YES ON PROP 8:

Having tolerance without condoning.
We can love someone while still maintaining and advocating our standards and beliefs.

Unless Proposition 8 passes, California society will soon undergo a profound change in its basic understanding of marriage and family life.
That will affect everyone in numerous ways. Over time, greater acceptance of nontraditional marriage will be demanded of all people. This could impact the ability of any religion to teach and practice its beliefs.

Proposition 8 will not hurt gays and lesbians.
In California, the law provides for marriage-related benefits to be given to civil unions and domestic partnerships. Proposition 8 does not diminish these benefits.

Failure to pass Proposition 8 will hurt children.
If same-sex marriage remains legal, public schools will put it on equal footing with traditional marriage. Children will likely receive “age appropriate” information about sexual relations within heterosexual and homosexual marriages.

Failure to pass Proposition 8 will hurt churches.
The court’s decision will inevitably lead to conflicts with religious liberty and free speech rights. Society will become more and more hostile to traditional beliefs about marriage and family.

Please take 2 minutes to watch this video about what Prop 8 means to you and your family.

For further reading on Prop 8 and how it will change not only California, but eventually all of America, please follow the link to ProtectMarriage.com.  I also recommend reading this article on The Divine Institution of Marriage posted on the LDS newsroom website.

Prop 8 is not about taking away gay rights, it’s not about intolerance, it’s not about keeping homosexuals out of mainstream society.  It’s not about a church telling the world what to do.  Please take the time and effort to understand your vote.  Prop 8 is about the future of our children and the society which we are building for them.  It’s about protecting our families, our children, and our marriages.

VOTE YES ON PROP 8!

And if you’re not a California resident, please do whatever you can to spread the word to your friends and contacts who ARE.  Even if it doesn’t seem so now, sooner or later this will eventually affect YOU.

Jake posted a funny little story on his blog today, and I couldn’t help but re-post it here…

Early this morning, around 3:10 actually, Melissa got up to go to the bathroom. (Side effect of being preggo I assume.) She tells me that every night when she does this, I usually stir in my sleep, roll over onto my back, and start snoring like I have a deep seeded need to wake the dead. On one other occasion, I rolled over and jumped out of bed. As soon as I did, I immediately came to the conclusion that I had been sleeping, and shouldn’t be standing. The only natural thing for me do as a result was to go to the bathroom.

Of course that makes sense.

This brings us to early this morning. I recall rolling over a few times, not able to fall back asleep, so I decided that logic ruled that I should probably make a trip the toilet. I got out of bed, quiet, so as to not wake Melissa. As I walked into the bathroom, calling out from the darkness, someone called, “Hi.” I did what any sane person would do when toilet starts talking, and reeled back and screamed like a girl. I shouldn’t say that I screamed like a girl, that would give this to much justice, I screamed as if the devil was dragging my soul to hell, and I was clutching what ever thread of life I could hold onto. 

Turns out, Melissa was already in the bathroom, and was casually announcing her occupancy to me before I tried to double up on the single toilet.

So, lesson learned, make sure your spouse is still in bed before you try to use the bathroom. The results could be catastrophic. 

And now a shameless plug for the wonderful geek (in the hip sense of the word) that I married.  You should check out his blog occasionally (or regularly if you’d like).  jakespurlock.com  He posts some pretty cool pictures, and you might get more frequent updates of our lives than you would just checking my blog alone.  Plus, if you want to see the entire ultrasound video of Baby Spurlock, it’s there, too.  Enjoy!

This little baby is NOT shy…  and he likes show and tell!

Way back in May, we went to Temple Square for my birthday and took a TON of pictures of the beautiful flower gardens.  I promised to post some of my favorite pics, but now it’s September and I’m just barely getting to it.  Here are some of my favorites.  The pictures don’t nearly do the gardens justice, but they have inspired me to work on our flower beds a little more (hard to believe if you’ve seen my dying bushes… but next year is my year!!).  And by the way, I’m 99.9% positive that this is what Heaven looks like.

And speaking of Heaven, thank you everyone for your sweet comments and sympathy about Millie.  It’s been week now and we’re doing much better!  We miss her but feel peace about everything.  Love you all!

On Sunday morning, we found Millie paralyzed from her waist down, unable to move her legs or control her bowels, and shaking all over.  We took her to the pet hospital around noon and stayed there for about 4 hours, doing blood tests, x-rays, and trying understand why.  She stayed there overnight, but on Monday the only change in her was that she was no longer shaking.  We laid her to rest later that evening.  And I still wouldn’t call myself an animal person in general, but I definitely loved her.  I didn’t expect how hard I would take it - I miss her so much and can barely keep my eyes dry for more than about two hours at a time.  But Jake and I healing a little bit at a time, and we know she’s happy where she is now.

In her last two days, she just let us hold her and love her.  She wanted to get up and run around and jump so badly, but her little legs just wouldn’t work. It was so hard to see her not being able to be a puppy.  The doctor said that she had a deformed vertebrae (probably from birth) that had just shifted and was now pushing up on her spinal column - causing the paralysis, incontinence, and shaking.  The odds were so stacked against her that even surgery likely wouldn’t help.  So we held her as long as we could, scratched her ears and her belly, held her little paws, and then we let her sleep for the last time.  We buried her in a special spot in the mountains, with sunshine, trees, and a view of Mt. Millicent (for which she was named).  I held her all wrapped up in a blanket as we drove up the mountain road - she was so peaceful and I wasn’t quite ready to let go.  We dedicated her grave and placed her in it with her stuffed chicken and the pink bandana Jake bought for her.  We love her and miss her so much.  But we know that she’s in a better place now - somewhere that she is whole and healthy, but hopefully still her cute puppy size.  We feel lucky even to have had her for 2 short months. Our neighbor Beth and her two children came to the pet hospital to say goodbye to Millie and as we were sitting in the waiting room, Beth said that Millie was so special and unique - and maybe that’s why we only had her for such a short time.  She was just that special.  She was the perfect dog for us - the sweetest little girl we ever could have hoped for.  We like to think that now she has joined Jake’s fleet of guardian angels on their Search and Rescue task force.  Oh how we miss her already.  She really has a special place in our hearts.  We love you, our sweet little Millie. 

Memories of Millie

5/6/2008 – 9/8/2008

• She is part reindeer, part puppy.  We determined that from the way she would prance/pounce especially when we first got her.
• She couldn’t walk straight for the first little bit - had trouble getting the back legs and front legs to get in the same direction so she’d zig zag/prance/pounce wherever she went.
• When I would come down in the morning, I’d sit Indian style on the floor and she’d jump in my lap, try to lick my face, and let me pet her, scratch her, especially her belly.
• The beautiful white cross on her chest.
• How her cute little nubbin of a tail would go crazy wagging whenever she got excited (i.e. whenever she saw one of us after not being around for awhile, whenever she saw a friend, etc.).  Her tail was docked when we got her (cut off, I guess), so it was only like an inch long, and whenever she wagged it, she ended up shaking her entire hind end.
• How much she loved when Jake would feed her string cheese, bread w/PB, tuna, treats.
• Our favorite was when she would lie on her back with all 4 legs up, and try to gnaw on something near her head.

• How she pounced at her bone, as if it were alive.
• A few times recently she’s run into the screen door trying to get either inside or out, not even seeing it.  She had a much better track record with the glass door.  We laughed, she just looked at us with her head cocked.
• Digging in the dirt whenever she could reach it.  Or the drain pipes, or the wet part in our grass.  Then when we’d call her to stop, she’d look up at us with her ears up, with an expression that said, “Huh?  Who, ME?  I’m just digging over here.”  There are still a few of her holes in our dirt that I’m not quite ready to fill back up…
• How she’d look us all alert with her ears up and her head cocked.
• Whenever she was in the front room, she’d just want to play - with the table, the table runner, ANY SHOES she could find, the Gatorade bottle.
• Sometimes when we were in the family room but she was supposed to stay in the kitchen, she start creeping into the family room, and as soon as we would notice her and tell her to go back, she’d run back to the kitchen.
• She got pretty used to not being able to go to the front room - she would sit at the border, right where the kitchen floor met the carpet, and she’d barely put her little paws on the carpet.  As if to say, “Look, I’m close, but I’m not going in.”
• If she was in the kitchen when I came home from work, she’d see me opening the front door and try her best to stay on the linoleum, but after a second or two she wouldn’t be able to stand it anymore and she’d run as fast as she could to greet me.
• Chasing the Gatorade bottle for HOURS in the kitchen - every once in awhile she’d think it’s alive so she’d back away and growl and bark at it.

• Her “shiz-eating grin”, as Jake called it when she would look at us all excited with her tongue hanging out the side of her mouth.
• She LOVED our neighbors - especially Anna.  She’d be so excited whenever she saw them that she’d end up accidentally peeing.  She really liked Laura, too.
• How ready and alert she would always be to get out of her kennel.  Especially when we moved her down to the basement.  She’d always be standing ready, looking around the corner to see if we were coming for her.
• She liked sitting under the back porch in the shade, but often she’d get her leash tangled around the post to the point that she couldn’t move hardly 1 foot.  So we’d rescue her and unwind the leash, but she would inevitably do it again.  Cute puppy.
• She would pull ANYTHING she could through her kennel - once I found like 5 washcloths and hand towels in it.
• She liked getting into the insulation and wood in the basement… not so good for a puppy.
• She decided that the little soft bed we got for her was a better chew toy then the bed.  She tore part of it apart, pulling out the stuffing from inside.  Also, she seldom sat INSIDE the bed - she usually wanted to lie half on, half off.  And the first time we put it in her kennel, she crawled under it to sleep.
• She always wanted to lick our faces, but I never let her until the day we said good-bye.  Then I couldn’t get enough of it.
• One morning we were cooking bacon, and we had her outside in the back yard with the just the screen door shut and it only took her a few seconds to realize, “Um, you’re cooking bacon?  I don’t know if you remember, but I’m a DOG and bacon is kinda my thing…”  She was up to the screen door pushing her nose against it and wagging her little tail pretty quickly.  After breakfast, I ended up giving her a piece of bacon
• Going on walks was almost impossible. She would run around our legs and it was a struggle to make sure the leash wouldn’t trip us.
• Sometimes she would be scratching her head with her hind legs, and all of a sudden she’d start chewing on her foot.

• One day Jake brought home a little pink bandana with white polka dots for her - I almost died. But it was so cute that he got it for her, and it really fit her sweet personality.
• Then I almost died again when Jake got her a little dog tag for her collar and on it he’d put “Millie Spurlock”.  But now I’m ok with it.  Now I really feel like she was part of our family.
• She had a love-hate relationship with sprinklers - she would get up close and bite at the water, only to run away the next second, and then go back at it again.
• She loved going on walks to new places - she’d run back and forth from one spot in the grass to the next, so many things to discover!
• Her sweet little face and name, she just wanted to love and be loved. She was so excited for life and for every single day.
• Jake said she hardly ever winced for the shots when he took her to the vet - she didn’t mind it at all.
• She loved taking naps on top of the air conditioning vent.
• She wasn’t a huge fan of taking baths, but after awhile she got used to the blow dryer and would sit calmly in Jake’s lap and bite at the air.
• When she got the cue that her bath time was done and she was free to go, she never went down the stairs faster.
• She loved playing fetch, but only until she realized that we would take the ball away from her again if she brought it to us. So she’d catch it about 3 times and then just take the ball with her and sit down.
• Her favorite toys were her chicken, a leather shoe, the teddy bear from Anna, and the rope.  And the dog brush with the wooden handle.
• She LOVED eating ice.  On that sad Sunday, I fed her ice as she lay on the grass.  She couldn’t get enough of it.
• Whenever I washed dishes, she would want to sit on top of my feet, partly to just be there, partly because there was another air conditioning vent there.
• She liked to bite on her leash. One day we had the leash partly inside the sliding glass door but she was outside, and apparently she saw someone she liked and bolted so fast that she broke the leash.  We got a stake with a much stronger leash that day.
• She loved sitting on the grass when it was windy outside, just feeling the wind on her face.  She’d face the wind and let it blow her ears all the way back.
• She had one crooked ear that would always be flopped backwards when the other one was down regular.  Cute little lopsided ears…

• She liked to nibble on Jake’s toes when she was really little.
• It was so cute when she would put her paw up as if to say - please hold my hand.
• She would never do her business in one spot - she would always walk a few steps, leaving a trail of it.  THANKS, Millie.
• She loved to be scratched and played with.  And she had the softest fur I had ever felt.
• She loved kids - she was happiest when she was outside playing with all of our neighbor kids.
• She would army crawl when she wanted to sneak up on something, with her arms straight out, and her legs straight back.
• When we first got her, Jake would have to take her out in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. The only way he could keep track of her was her little white bum.
• Just a few days ago we noticed that she had lost 3 or her front puppy teeth.
• When we would take her somewhere in the car, if she wasn’t in her carrier, she’d want her head out the window or right in front of the air conditioning
• On Jake’s recent walks with her to the mailbox without her leash - she’d run almost the whole way there and then look back at him as if to say, “What’s taking you so long? I’m already here, you should be too.”

So in my last post on my old blog (where I gave the link to this new blog), I mentioned a certain super fantastic announcement.  They say that “a picture is worth a thousand words”, but you can decide for yourself…

Juicy Details

- Due date:  February 26, 2009  (And YES, we will find out the gender, just not for another LONG month…)

- Current cravings:  oranges, grilled cheese with lots of cold dill pickles, ice water

- Cravings that I’m already over:  marinara sauce, watermelon, Mexican-hole-in-the-wall-Beto’s-style steak super nachos

We’re so excited!  

P.S.  I’ve already picked out the baby’s halloween costume for next year.  YOU JUST WAIT, it will totally knock your socks off!

Ta-da!  I present to you the new blog.  Currently it’s a work in progress - I still have some tweaks to make and things to add.  I know, no big flashing lights or anything, but I like it better than any of the stock Wordpress themes that were available for the old blog.  And you probably already noticed, but we moved everything from the old blog to the new blog, so basically this is just the new and improved version.  Enjoy!