And love it.

It's been almost two weeks into the semester and time just keeps on going; I can't complain. I'd say though, in the past 48 hours, we've all been closer than most.

It's so different in Helaman now; I barely even remember how things were before when every room was filled and all my friends literally lived a hop, skip, and jump away. What once housed nearly a couple thousand kids now, is down to now only 80, but right now, that's working to our advantage.

Between the luau and the ward activity today, everyone has really started to band closer together. The luau was such a grand experience yesterday. Walking out of Budge and hearing the DJ blast music from the heart of Helaman Halls brought back so many familiar memories of nerd dances, formals, and so many others that went on in that room. I was skeptical about it all and knew it was just going to be a let down. 

Well, I was wrong.

I don't think I have ever had that much fun at a dance. Everything from the coconut bras, to pineapple bowling, to limbo and smores - it really couldn't have gone much better. The dance was so much fun; mostly because we have the craziest, outgoing guys on the planet in our hall. We just almost are forced to like each other because, well, we're all each other has. It's not like you can just go hangout with your other friends in Helaman... because you ain't got none. It's really helped us all though, and the ward grows on me more and more everyday. By the way, if you didn't know: Hannah is the limbo champ.

Today we had our first ward activity equipped with a trip to the "This is the Place" monument at Heritage Park in Salt Lake City. It's the place where Brigham Young... well you know the story. It was the place where he said it was the place. Anyway, it was loads of fun except for the fact that it was so early in the morning. The bus was scheduled to leave at 9:45am which is way to early for a college student on a Saturday morning. Addison and I decided we needed breakfast first so in attempts to wake  him up I fell back asleep and he ended up waking me up but in the process he fell back asleep so the whole time I thought he was awake he wasn't and I had to wait for him anyway. Make sense? Good.

Well we made it to breakfast and got back just in time to change and head over to the bus to make the journey. They put in a couple corny church videos, that of which my sleep took priority over. The best of the morning though was apparently while Addison was walking down the hall to the room, someone yelled out, "Like a wedding dress, we're off!" Couldn't get enough of that - sorry for the random tangent.

So we got there and ventured through Brigham Young's house and I took the opportunity to just goof around with my camera and take pictures of everything. Addison had a fun time keeping up and getting stalker shots of haha, by the end of the day he had caught up in skill I think. Afterwards we had lunch and learned how to Virginia Rail which was a riot. Too many people in one room and Michael killing the crap out of me and Addison with his funny sayings. He's such a great kid and I'm so happy to have him in the ward. Everything he says is just so hilarious and he always makes people around him smile. He sure is the best - and really smart too [of course]. Anyway we made it to the monument and Addison found that his family came through one of the handcart companies which was really awesome. Afterwards we made it back to Provo in due time.

Was planning on playing rugby today with the guys but just had so much to do between mission stuff, the sunday school lesson, and homework. Addison was working pretty much until nearly an hour ago so I decided to help him out with a few things since I had nothing better to do. He's a great kid and it's nice to have his company up here. It's funny how things just work out like that.

Trials will never be easy but we get help as long as we have faith. It's true: