Holden's First Letter From College

Here is Holden's first e-mail from college:

Hey mom,

I'm in the David O'Mckay library right now doing some science homework. Everything is going great here. I really love all of my roommates, especially Bud and Mike. They are just cool and such a good example to me. Me and Nick wrestled last night and I gave him a bloody nose-- whoops! Then he tried to sneak up on me later that night and I put him in another headlock again and Bud gave him wedgie. Then when Bud left for work we set up the couches in a big wall between the kitchen and the family area and when Bud came home we jumped out from behind them and tickled Bud because he is really ticklish. Things are going really awesome. You can tell that Ryan is really looking for a wife soon because he goes out with like 5o girls in one day, its really funny because he is exhausted from doing so many things.

I just had my AF (American Foundations) class and it was interesting. Its pretty conservative in there and here at school but we were talking about Guantanamo Bay and a lot of people sided with me so that's good. A lot of them were arguing they had no rights because they weren't American and that made me mad and my professor could tell so he let me argue back for a little bit. He is conservative but he didn't agree with the Guantanamo Bay thing either. He said we all have inalienable rights such as life liberty and the pursuit of happiness and that didn't look like the pursuit of happiness to him so that made me feel better. All while he was talking about the pursuit of happiness though I kept thinking of Eddie Izzard making fun of us because we pursue it like we do an animal. Anyways, I have to do some extra sciencebecause one of my group members decided to drop the class! LAME!

Love you mom!~Holden Glenn Hays (Hold)

It was a great experience taking him off to college. We had an excellent trip and got to spend a lot of time with him before hand. Lezlee posted some of the pictures below so I won't post any more here. We spent three days in West Yellowstone and the park. The first day we did the north loop. There is some new activity at Mammoth and so that was good to see. But we hit a snow storm by Mount Washborne and so we didn't get to see any wolves or bears. A huge bison did walk within two feet of our Durango though. I looked out through the passenger window and Holden's head was level with it's eye! It's back was taller than the Durango's roof.

The next day we did the east side of the south loop. I'd bought a spotting scope the night before and we used it to watch two coyotes for about 30 minutes on the side of a mountain hunting field mice. In total we saw four coyotes that day. A ranger told us the wolves up north were pushing the coyotes south. We had lunch at the Yellowstone Lodge--very cool.

The third day we drove down through Teton to Jackson and then over the pass throught Driggs and back to Rexburg.

Thursday we checked Holden into apartment and met is roomates--you get a flavor of them from above. There are three returned missionaries and three freshman. Bud--the apparently tickilish RM--said he liked one of their earlier roommates because he had otter pops. So we bought 700 otter pops--Holden needs all the help he can get.

His friend Austin lives just a couple doors down, so that's nice.

He stayed in his apartment that night and then we had dinner with him on Friday after he was done with some school things. Friday night we stopped in Salt Lake and then drove to Panguitch on Saturday and stayed in a cool old in. Sunday we drove into Bryce Canyon National Park before heading home. It was a very nice trip.

Thanks to Lara for her nice comment saying that she couldn't believe that he was old enough to be in college--which I interpreted as saying "I can't believe that someone as young and good looking and full of viality and charisma as you (meaning me) could have a son old enough to be in college. He must have gone to school early, which must mean that he's really smart. Which I can totally understand because he's your son and you're the most brilliant person I've ever met and probably that has ever been born." That was really nice of you to say Lara.

I think Lezlee and Moni worked out most of the details for getting together in Salt Lake before Jenny's wedding. Although I'm thinking about boycotting the wedding because she never calls me back! You've been warned sis.

Kirk