Jake and Shannon

Goodbye Desi!

2011-12-24T14:43:00.001-08:00

One of my closest friends passed way Dec 17th in an automobile accident. I still am having a hard time wrapping my mind around it. We have so many memories together that it is very hard for me to go about my day without being reminded of you.

The little things. Last night my pants were falling off so I needed a belt, I grabbed a belt from the hanger and ended up in tears because it was a belt you used to wear that you gave to me. I drove to my in laws past the appartments that we used to live together in.

We had some rough times the past couple of years but I want to think that the changes you were making in your life were bringing you back to be my best friend Desi that I always knew.

This is how I always remember you. We had the best times together. Just hanging out and goofing off. You were always happy and up for a good time.

You always hated this picture from our California trip, but I like to imagine you walking towards heaven and waiting for me to get there. One day all of the Lewisville girls will be back together. Until then you better be saving me a spot.

Love you!

Our cute house.

2011-12-13T17:32:00.000-08:00

I told everyone several months ago that I would post pictures of our house. I have been a super slacker since I got my new job. It has been hard to actually work full time! hahaha I was so used to being "full time" and working 20 hrs a week.

This is a picture of the back of our house. Our lawn is a little patchy because we planted it in June. With that being said I think it looks pretty dang good! I can't wait for the plants to get bigger in our landscaping so that you can see all of them.

This is a view from our back porch. Our back yard was a huge selling point for us. We don't have any neighbors to the back of us. All that is there is a pasture and lots of trees so we occasionally have cows that we can see.

Another view of our back yard. I am so excited for the potential it has! I can't wait for next summer so I can plant a garden.

This is a picture of the front of our house. It is going to look so good next summer when our grass is coming in good and all of our plants are growing. We have the little mound of dirt by the mailbox that we have to figure out what to plant there so it will be a fun adventure next year.

We are so happy with our house and must have been doing something right to fall right into it at such a great price.

Catching up

2011-09-05T11:34:00.000-07:00

Life has been pretty crazy for us lately and I haven't gotten on here to blog in a long time. As many of you know we moved into a new home last fall so we have been working like crazy to get our house into ship shape with putting a yard in and such.

I recently started working in the ER at EIRMC and am loving it! It is so awesome to have a job that you don't see the same stuff every day and to learn how to think on the go. If I would have known how much I would have liked it I would have switched to it earlier.

I have a very talented hustband who has saved us so much money for our yard. He has done everything himself. He put in a RV pad, landscaped our yard complete with the sprinkling system and fixes anything that needs to be fixed.

As always we have been doing alot of camping and dirt biking. Not only can my husband landscape a yard but he can fix anything that might be wrong with a dirt bike. If you don't believe me just ask any of his brothers.

This was taken over memorial weekend at 8 mile.

Jake is working up in glacier national park again this year and the snow fall they had over the winter was absolutely crazy. You might look at these last two pictures and be less than amazed until you know that they were taken in the middle of July this year! They had to delay the opening of the park due to how much snow they still had.

This picture really shows how much snow they still had in July.

All in all we are doing wonderful and are absolutely loving our new home and the location it is in. I will have to post more pictures of Jakes brand new love (his new truck) I know if I can't find him he's probably out in the garage polishing something on it. He's like a kid in a candy store.

Super cross

2011-05-10T17:14:00.000-07:00

The last few months I have been a hard core supercross follower. If the races aren't on CBS I will make sure that I get online and watch it as soon as it is available. Jake has always followed the races so we thought it would be fun to go to the races in Salt Lake.

We had so much fun and it was such a good race! The day was really nice with temps in the 50's. As soon as the sun went down it got cold really fast! All and all we had a ton of fun and are looking forward to going to next years. One thing I will bring is hand warmers for inside of my gloves. I was so nervous for the race that my hands were super sweaty inside of my gloves and in turn were really cold!

I am horrible at Blogging!

2011-02-08T15:35:00.000-08:00

I now just realized that it has been over a year since I last updated our blog. What has happened in our life. Lets see.......
We were finally able to sell our home in Cornerstone and luck was on our side when we found a beautiful brand new home that was everything we wanted! Not to mention the interest rate we locked into was an amazing 3.875 on a 30 yr loan. Jake worked all summer for H/K Construction in Glacier National Park and is now laid off for the winter. He has began a job search to see if he can find something a little closer to home. Being laid off isn't all bad for Jake. He has been able to go to Mesquite a few times this year and ride dirt bikes and eat as much food as he can possibly imagine at the buffets here. If you know him at all you know that dirt bikes and food are two of his favorite things!
I am still working at the Idaho Falls Surgical Center. It is a dream job for an R.N. No nights, weekends or holidays. The only down side is our busy time of the year is Nov. and December during the holidays but I will take that instead of having to work all night long.
We are doing well, just have really boring lives, so we don't want to bore everyone with them here on this blog!

Mexican Cruise

2010-03-09T14:21:00.000-08:00

We recently returned from a Mexican Riviera cruise with Mitch and Chelsea. It was a blast and I have never eaten so much food in my life! I gained an impressive 12 lbs!

We left from San Diego on the Carnival Elation. The weather was so nice in San Diego. I wanted so badly to put on shorts! Only people from Idaho would want to wear shorts in 65 degree weather!

My cute husband standing on the dock of our ship.

This picture is looking out at the San Diego harbor right before we left for sea. We spent the the whole first day at sea. We were able to see dolphins jumping and just hang out by the pool and of course eat lots of food!

The night we spent out at sea was also our formal night. It was so fun to get dressed up and go to a nice dinner. When we were out taking these pictures we saw a bunch of squid swimming by the side of the ship. We tried to take a picture of them but the pictures didn't show them very well.

Mitch and Chelsea in their fancy evening wear. Check out Chelsea's smoking hot legs!

While waiting for the line to go down at dinner we stepped into this piano bar and a nice Indian couple took a picture of all 4 of us.

The next day we went to Catalina Island. That is our ship in the back ground. The water was too shallow for the ship to get any closer so we had to take smaller boats up to shore.

This is a picture looking down the shore line.

This is right by the pier.

We rented a golf cart here and got to drive it all around the Island. Leave it to one of the Littlewood boys to figure out how to get the cart in between gears so we could coast down the big hills at a much faster speed than the cart would allow while in gear.

It was so pretty up on the hills.

A view from the top of a hill. Notice the ship in the back ground.

We let house keeping come in one day to change the sheets and what not and they made the cutest elephant out of towels!

The most fun was going to Mexico. This is us at La Bufadora or the blow hole. We went on a tour bus with our tour guide Alejandro. He was super funny. At the first of the tour he pretended he could only speak Spanish. We thought we were in for one heck of a bad tour. Once the bus started to move he started speaking English. Those bus drivers are really scary drivers. They go so fast and are swerving into the other lane of trafic to avoid the pot holes while there is on coming traffic! On the drive out to La Bufadora was saw a Mexican man riding a zebra.

This is at the blow hole during one of the, for lack of a better word, explosions of water. The waves would come in and get forced into the cracks in the rocks and then shoot up into the air. Alejandro took the perfectly timed picture of all of us.

The weather was so nice in Mexico! I just love this picture because the ocean has that amazing blueish green color to it.

Our last night on the ship. This was our formal dining table and in front of all of us is the chocolate melting cake which was our favorite desert.

After a long day of fun in the sun we are ready to hit the hay. We weren't party animals at all. I don't know if it was the way the ocean moved the ship or if it was the massive quantities of food we ate, but we were always back in our rooms ready for bed by 10pm.

We had so much fun on this cruise and we couldn't have asked for better traveling partners than Mitch and Chelsea. Hopefully we will be able to do it again!

Homecoming

2009-09-30T12:05:00.000-07:00

My cutest husband in the world finally gets to be done with work for the season in 2 weeks! I almost can't contain my excitement to finally get him back home!

Bear Lake

2009-08-16T07:53:00.000-07:00

Sorry this is super late, I have just not taken the time to put all the pictures on.

We had such a fun time and want to make sure that we say Thank you! to Buffy and her family!

This is Payton, Chelsea, Me and Kade the first day

at Bear Lake.

Payton and Kade had so much fun playing in the

waves. Everytime Kade would walk into a wave

he would laugh like it was the funniest thing he

had ever done.

We were lucky enough to be able to go out on the

boat and go tubing. The water is so shallow for so

long that someone has to push you out into the deeper

water.

Chelsea and Payton on the wave runner. Payton

thought this thing was the coolest invention of all

time. I think he would have spent every second

out on it if someone would have gone with him.

I wanted to drive before I let Payton have a turn.

Payton took Lory out on a good ride. Needless to say

it was so good that he never got her talked into

another one.

Our final day, heading back up to the camper to get

all of our stuff together and go back to normal life.

(which is so over rated!)

To Bone and Back

2009-06-28T06:33:00.001-07:00

My moms side of the family, the Anderson's, all love to run. We thought for this year it would be fun to have our family reunion around the To-Bone&Back race. We didn't have quite enough people to form a team, but Connor and Chelsea my brother and sister in law stepped right in to help.
In this race, you hav 8 people on a team to finish the 40 miles. So that breaks down into 5 mile legs for everyone.

Chelsea ran leg 1 and did so awesome! She improved her time from her previous time doing the race by almost 30 mins! This picture is not actually of her running her leg of the race. I forgot to take a picture of her while she was running. So we posed this picture right before I started my leg of the race.

My Aunt Holly is an awesome runner! She took the up hill portion of the race, and when I say up hill I mean it is totally up hill. She did this part of the race and only took 50 mins! She is so awesome!

Now, let me preface Connors little bit with the fact that he occasionally goes jogging and has never done any serious training. Now, with saying that Connor finished 5 miles in 37 mins! He was so awesome! He is definetely on my team for next year!

Connor had to leave to go to work after he ran his leg of the race so we took a picture with all the Littlewoods before he left.

Melody took the bone (yes, they had us carry a fake bone as the baton) from Connor. Poor Melody had ran 8 miles the day before and then volunteered to help us fill a spot on our team left by my mom when her darn appendix ruptured. My mom is doing fine and recovering but just wasn't healed up enough to run. Thanks for filling in Mel!

Cayla did so good! She doesn't really enjoy running, but since she has been on the Sacramento State gymnastics team has been keeping it up. She has to get in so many hours of cardio a week for her training and running is the easiest way for her. I am so proud of her for how hard she ran!

Layne did very well. It always makes me mad at these boys that they can go out and run 5 miles without ever really training for running.

I had the easiest portion of the race and still didn't beat Connors time! I was able to finish in 40 mins which is an amazing time for me! I am very proud of it, but would have liked to beat Connors. Especially since I have actually been training for it.

Lee was amazing. In the heat of the day (on his birthday) he was able to finish his portion in 41 mins! He has lost alot of weight and is in really good shape now!

This was a picture of our team at the finish line, minus Connor. My team was so awesome! I can't believe the kind of times that they got!

I am hoping to definetely do this next year. I think I caught the running bug again. I need to sign up for some more races. Last year I sort of took the year off and it would be fun to get back into it again

Thanks to my team for all the hard work!

Planting a Garden

2009-06-10T16:56:00.000-07:00

I have such great In-laws. Chelsea, Payton, Lory and I got to get together at the Littlewoods to plant the family garden. It was alot of fun to put all the seeds in and hope that it would grow.

While we were planting the garden Kade was trying to sneak and eat dirt. He is such a funny kid and hes getting so big! It has been fun watching him grow up.

Memorial Weekend

2009-06-10T16:41:00.001-07:00

Memorial weekend is always a fun time around the Littlewood household. I know I have said this before, but I am so lucky to have married into a family that likes to go on little trips. i love camping so much! Before I met Jake, I thought camping was roughing it up in the mountains in tents. I didn't know that camping could be so relaxing, and you can take showers too! Thanks Pres for letting us sleep in your trailer!

My cute logger husband. He spent the majority of the time chopping wood. I'm not really sure why.

Even though I wasn't at work, I got to take Conners stiches out with some help from my lovely assistant, Chelsea.

Sitting around the camp fire. A favorite pass time of camping.

It can't be a camping trip without dirt biking!

Chelsea and Kade. He was such a good boy! He was even teething and he hardly ever cried.

My new toy.

2009-05-17T07:43:00.000-07:00

As many of you know, Jakes family is really big into dirt biking. Before we even got married Jake was looking for a bike for me. I had been riding Paytons 125 that felt way too small.

I thought the day would never come when I would be able to have my own bike, but it finally came!

I am still not very good at dirt biking, but Jake has been really good with me. He has taken me out riding the past 2 weekends to teach me. Hopefully with some more practice I will be able to keep up with my sister-in-law Chelsea.

Spring Break

2009-03-31T10:44:00.000-07:00

This last week we all went to Mesquite for spring break. It was one of the funnest trips I have ever been on. It was also really nice that we got out of the nasty weather in Idaho for a while. Thanks Aunt T for letting us stay with you!

At Grandma and Grandpa DeJongs house before we headed out on the long drive.

We got to go dirt biking while we were down there. The guys were so patient with me and how slow I was. I was so frusterated with riding in the sad and Jake was so good with me. He let me ride his big bike so that I could make it through the sand easier. Mitch also crashed his bike trying to go over a cliff. He ended up putting some holes in his radiator but the boys worked on it all day the next day and they were able to get it fixed so they could go riding again without the girls.

My cute hubby on his dirt bike.

Everyone checking out Mitch's busted up radiator.

A hill the boys were climbing. It doesn't look that steep, but it really is!

The cliff at the top of this pic is the one that Mitch smashed his radiator on.

While all the boys were trying to fix Mitch's radiator us girls got to hang out at the pool. I can't even tell you how nice it was to finally have sun!

Baby Kade thought that being stuck through the pieces of plastic in the chair was the coolest invention ever. He jumped around in there for a few minutes until we were afraid he would fall all the way through.

Conner and Kade

Chelsea and I were the Queens of Guitar Hero at the hotel. It was sad how much we really played!

All the boys in the hot tub after a day of hard riding without the girls.

Mitch thought he needed to wake Conner up so he tipped his matress over while Conner was in it! Needless to say, Conner was not very happy with this whole scenario.

While we were packing our suitcase to go home we were also keeping an eye on Kade while Mitch and Chelsea were getting ready. We stuck him in our suitcase and he loved it! There was so much to play with!

Conner and Jake decided that they wanted to be on a bobsledding team so after we were done loading all of our stuff into the car they took the luggage carrier back to the hotel.

Some very sleepy boys on the way home.

I really do have the best in-laws ever! I am so glad that they do trips like this as a whole family. It is something that I look forward to all year long.

San Francisco

2009-02-22T08:31:00.000-08:00

As many of you may know, my little sister Cayla competes on the Sacramento State Gymnastics team. Jake and I decided that since I had a long weekend for presidents day that we would go and watch one of her meets and then head to Alcatraz for fun.

Cayla did very well on her meet, and to my surprise it was only 2 hrs long! That is a great improvement from the all day meets that she used to have before she went to college.

On presidents day we headed to San Francisco with my parents. I was expecting there to be really nice weather, but instead it rained the whole time we were in California. Basically I'm trying to give a reason why my hair is so ugly in these pictures and why Jake is wearing his gross hat.

This was the cute boat that we got to travel to the island on. The water was very choppy and I hated the whole ride.

San Francisco has such neat bridges over the ocean. This is a picture of the Bay Bridge from inside of the boat.

When we got to the island the first place we wanted to go was on a tour of the prison. Now this is the first time that I have ever been on an audio tour. I thought it was a little strange at first but ended up really enjoying myself. It was nice because you could stop and take more time at different parts of the prison that you found more interesting. It was very funny to see all of the people in the prison walking around with headphones on and this thing dangling from their neck. So these are some pics of the jail cells.

As you can see they have three rows of cells all stacked on top of each other. To be quite honest, the whole place reminded me of the movie Shawshank Redemption.

This is a picture of their exercise courtyard. You look out and wonder how they ever stayed inside the walls, but if you actually go out in the courtyard, you will see that the walls are much higher than they look.

San Francisco is only 1 1/2 miles from Alcatraz. It looked absolutely amazing from the island.

This is us all grungy from all of the rain out in front of the Wardons office and guest entrance to the prison. That is San Francisco behind us.

This is a picture of Alcatraz as we were leaving on the boat to go back to San Francisco. The ride was much better on the way back.

I just realized what a horrible sister I am because I didn't take a single picture of Cayla at her meet. Next time I will record a routine so that everyone can see it. This was a very fun trip for both Jake and I. The only crapy part was that we hit bad weather on the way home and it took us 20 hrs to drive. I have never been more angry at people than I was on Donners pass with all of the California drivers holding up traffic so they could put their chains on. Please! I have worse roads in my subdivision people!

My wonderful family.

2009-02-01T14:17:00.000-08:00

Today I have been thinking of how lucky I am to have such a great family. I was raised in the church with wonderful parents.

Not only that, but I have been blessed with In-laws who are wonderful. I have never met such loving and giving people. We are truly blessed.

My mid-life crisis

2009-01-25T07:49:00.001-08:00

I am going through a mid-life crisis with my hair! It is not growing in as curly as it used to be! I wouldn't call it straight, but it is definetely not my normal curly hair. I don't know how to fix it anymore!

Christmas and stuff

2009-01-14T18:08:00.000-08:00

We had so much fun during the Holiday Season. I just love being married to the most wonderful man in the whole world. The one problem with the holidays is that we both have gained some weight.
Big diet here we come!

The best husband in the world!

2008-12-06T17:27:00.001-08:00

I was upstairs taking a shower and getting ready. I hadn't talked to Jake in a while so I came downstairs to see what he was doing. I came around the corner, and Jake was scrubbing the floor! My cute husband was doing a job I hate and without even being asked!

It's Christmas time!

2008-12-06T17:24:00.000-08:00

It is the first Christmas that I have decorated my own tree. It looks a little silly in this pic, but It really does look so cute in real life!

Jakes Birthday

2008-12-04T08:18:00.000-08:00

Jake is such a funny guy, he had his birthday 12/2 on which he turned 23. I made his favorite dinner for him and I didn't even make vegetables because he hates them! lol

I was joking around with him and asked him how it felt to be 23 and if he felt older. He said he was a little upset because he wasn't in his early 20's anymore and that he was now in his mid 20's! lol I couldn't believe how upset he was about it. I feel like we are in the prime of our life and I love being 23. Maybe I will feel the same as him when I turn 24 in April.

All in all though, I love him so much and am glad that I was lucky enough to find him.

1st year under the belt! 11/24

2008-11-26T15:31:00.000-08:00

I cannot even believe that we have already been married for a year! I am the luckiest girl in the world to have found Jake. He is the most wonderful person I have ever found. Plus, he's hot!

We got to eat the top of our wedding cake which tasted even better than I remember and I thought it was really good when we had it at our reception! We went and got massages which was awesome. I had been having head aches lately and the massage therapist worked those right out!

I could hae never found a better man and am so lucky!

Dad's homecoming

2008-11-19T15:18:00.000-08:00

My dad got to go home from the hospital yesterday! It is a miracle. All of a sudden he wasn't requiring oxygen anymore so they sent him home and he doesn't have to wear oxygen or anything! I am so thankful for all of the prayers!

ICU update

2008-11-16T19:29:00.000-08:00

Just so everyone knows, my dad is improving. They have moved him from the ICU to the 4th floor of EIRMC. They still don't know what is wrong with him, but his oxygen requirement has gone down. He is now able to have a nasal canula with 5 liters of oxygen and can maintain his oxygen at 90%. They are pumping him full of anti-biotics and just hoping for some test results to come back with some answers.
Thanks for everyones prayers!

ICU

2008-11-15T07:55:00.000-08:00

For those of you who don't know, my dad was admitted to EIRMC's ICU yesterday. My dad had shoulder surgery Wed and has been home recovering. My mom was leaving for work yesterday morning and heard my dad kind of gurgleing when he breathed. She asked him if he was ok and he said he was. She though that maybe he just needed to cough and get some crap out of his throat.
Savanna came home in the middle of the day from school because one of her teachers had let her out early. She went to check on my dad and he was coughing up a large amount of blood. She called my mom and my mom told her to take him into the emergency room. When he got to the ER they checked his oxygen and it was 60% and he was still coughing up blood and working really hard to breath. They put my dad on a non-rebreather mask at 20 L of 100% O2 and he was sating in the high 80's. Needless to say they admitted him to the ICU at that point.

My mom is really scared because they have had her sign all of the papers that they can intubate my dad if they need to. They are running a bunch of tests to check for pulmonary blood clots and also aspiration infection.

In case any of you know my sisters Brandy and Cayla we aren't telling them right now. We would tell Brandy so she could come home and see my dad, but then Brandy would tell Cayla and she is in California in school until Thanksgiving and we don't want her to worry until we know what is wrong. So don't tell either of them.

All of your prayers are appreaciated.

2008-11-13T08:51:00.000-08:00

This really is no fun.......My poor sweet husband has been sick for 2 days with the Flu. I feel so bad for him! I wake up to go to work at 5 am and he is up watching TV because he can't sleep. I feel his head and he's burning up! Poor thing. But, is it selfish of me to hope I don't get sick?!

2008-11-08T14:57:00.000-08:00

So I have sat at home all day long today while Jake is out doing what he loves......Driving big equiptment. He had one of his old bosses call and ask him if he could come work a field for him and Jake jumped at the opportunity.

So while he is out playing/working, I am here to torture you all with some pictures!

This last summer while Jake was working in Glacier Park we were able to go on a hellicopter ride through the park and it was the coolest thing ever!

First time blogging

2008-11-08T08:29:00.000-08:00

This whole blogging thing is new to me. It seems like fun so no one can make fun of me while I get the hang of it.
Jake is finally home from working in Glacier and it is so nice! I love having him home. There are a few things that I am having a hard time with though. I can't sleep very well at night with him here. I assume that the sleeping will get better in time though. He also makes it really hard to leave for work in the morning because he is still sleeping!
All in all though, I love having him home. He is such a sweetheart and a great husband.