October 2013

October was a bust month for the Hudsons! (As already mentioned, we had said goodbye to Channy in August and Tanner in September as they had left for their missions. Also our dogs had puppies the first of September.)

Russ was in full hunting season in October. He has his dedicated hunter tag these next 3 years which means he can hunt each weapon (archery, muzzleloader, and rifle) AKA he was gone pretty much every weekend from the end of August to the end of October. He loves it though and would take his dirt bike and pack on his back up to his camping spot on the top of a mountain and pitch his tent in the only place available along the cliffs. This made for a nervous wife as he was gone multiple times during the early snow storms. However, despite the snow he still loved every minute of it. No buck this year, he passed up on a few because he wants a good one since he can only get 2 deer the next 3 years.

 

 

The puppies continued to grow and pretty much consumed a lot of our free time (as you can imagine 11 puppies would do)by watching them grow and learn things like how to get free out of their enclosure. It was so fun to have so many people come visit during this time, even though we know it wasn't to see us, it was to see the puppies. but we always had plenty of puppies to go around!

 October 14 brought their 6 weeks old mark and made it possible for them to leave their mom. They had stopped nursing at 5 weeks and were all eating solid food well. It was such a bittersweet time to see them leave because we(especially me) had gotten really attached to them all but they had gotten so big it was hard to handle 11 of them! We had my sister come over a few days before some started going to their new homes to take pictures of us all together. To get 13 dogs to cooperate was tough but they did better than expected!

Us with the puppy we decided to keep. much less chaotic with 3 dogs : )

Unfortunately, sickness found it's way into our home multiple times in October. Thankfully nothing lasting too long, but I always hate when either one of us is sick! Thank goodness for fleece camo blankets and the recliner : )

Multiple hunting trips were made in October. My sister Ashlee and I both had deer tags for the rifle hunt so Russ took some time off of his hunting to take us on Ash's hunt opening day and then take the last weekend of the hunt off with me to go out to the Uintah's for my tag. Taylor came with on Ash's and my father in law Mark came with on my hunt. Both trips were so much fun! (even though on ash's I worked that night and had been up since 4 am!! long day/night but the sunrise and the people I went with reminded me why it was worth it)

the best kind of "selfies" sorry babe, I had too! haha

Halloween festivities were a blast this year! Before Halloween we went up to Sundance for the Halloween moonlight lift ride which is awesome! We love it even when it's just in the summer and not Halloween time but the decorations and spooky people they had working it this year was even better!

I got to with my family to check out Stringtown Nightmare Express up in Lindon. Its a cute little neighborhood that has made tracks for a train to take kids/adults around for a haunted ride.

 

We had the adventure of going to our first haunted house together this year. Ash and Jake came along for the adventure of the Haunted Forest. I hate scary things and don't do well in haunted houses especially. We all survived and my husband still loves me, even though we both almost left with concussions : )

 

 

I got Halloween off this year (YAY!) so we dressed up and went to a party at our friends Brook and Jon's. It was really fun and I loved our costumes! Thank you Pintrest of course for the idea : )

 

Life is crazy busy, but incredibly good to us. Grateful for many memories this October! 



The one time we went on our honeymoon...

We had come home to our house in orem after our wedding. We enjoyed sleeping in Sunday morning and taking our time packing our things and tidying up the house for Channy to come house sit. We had hid our trucks the night before to avoid the wrath of Russ's friends so we drove to Springville in our getaway car to pick up my truck (we took my truck on our adventure) and left Russ's in hiding at my parents while we'd be gone.

Sometime Sunday afternoon we took off for Logan- our main destinations were in Idaho but we wanted to break up the driving. We were so impromptu on this trip that we booked our hotel online as we were pulling into town. After checking in to the holiday inn we went for a drive around town and ended up getting dinner at the beehive grill ( I think that's what it's called) we originally were planning on hitting up a movie after but we were so tired that we just went back and found Sherlock Holmes on HBO which was good enough for us!  For the recording love Logan and have very find memories of that town from going up in my college years summers to spend time with my friend Mindy and her family. Such a beautiful place! 

Monday morning we hit up the "free" breakfast at our hotel before getting back on the open road. We next found ourselves up in Bear Lake. I had never been there before but I'd go back even if it's just to eat the delicious raspberry shakes!!

Minnetonka cave is neat bear lake so we ventured up and checked it out before continuing on to Jackson Hole. It was actually a really cool cave! The only down side was that it was freezing!

 

 Russ was so tired and decided to take advantage of our 45 min wait to go in the cave :)

 This structure was called the groom, naturally we had to take a picture of the groom with it!

 

Late Monday afternoon we found ourselves arriving in Jackson Hole. Once again- such a beautiful place that I'd never been before. We checked into our hotel which was right by the "downtown" city center. We walked around seeing some of the little shops, of course took a picture with the elk antler arch, and found a place for dinner.

We ate at the Playhouse: where we ended up getting dinner and a show. You sit in this little dining room where you soon find out your waiters and waitresses are the characters in a play you're about to see. The food was actually surprisingly really good and the play/musical we saw after was Footloose. Russ isn't big on plays and musicals but he seemed to have enjoyed it and it was fun to do something different that we'd never done together before. 

Tuesday was Yellowstone day. We woke up really early to make the drive and enjoyed the scenery along the way, such as Grand Teton National Park. We spent the whole day in Yellowstone driving around to see a lot to different areas to make the most of our time. Naturally Old Faithful was on our to-do list along with seeing as much wildlife as possible! We were successful with Old Faithful, not so successful with the wildlife part. All we saw was bison and 1 elk, and a few birds here and there. Nonetheless it was a great day and we still loved it! (I particularly loved all the treats at the stop stations inside the park)

 

Wednesday we had originally planned on spending the day exploring more in Jackson Hole but as we awoke to a phone call from our house sitter (Channy) saying that the dogs had gotten out that morning but both their collars were missing etc... we decided to head home right then. So we grabbed our stuff checked out, grabbed some McDonalds and enjoyed the long ride home. It had been an amazing trip and we were dreading going back to reality.

Funny side note: we stayed in different hotels each night of the trip. We were a little last minute booking our last night in Jackson (Tuesday night) but when we found an opening at Cowboy Village where you stay in your own individual cabins we jumped on it immediately. We were so excited we'd gotten a spot at the place so many people had recommended us too. That night when we got there after spending the day in Yellowstone, we opened the door to the cabin to find....

 

BUNK BEDS! I started laughing hysterically that here we are on our honeymoon spending our last night in bunk beds. Guess we had just forgotten to read the fine print in all of our excitement : )
Luckily they were queen beds and everything worked out just great!