Just wanted to take some time to tell you about the volunteering I'm doing. I sent an email to Mom, Mary, and my old Rumsey Coach, Rick, that pretty much covers it all:

In short, it's awesome. I go from 9am-12pmish on Saturday mornings and basically just play and play and play. It's called "skill drills" and the basic set up is -- arrive at 9am, mess around, play a pick up game of just about anything until 9:30. Then we gather as a group, have an overview of the day's virtue -- one of 9: love, courage, wisdom, faith, hope, respect, self-control...can't remember the other two. It's not religious, just a means of impressing general good citizenship. Then we split off into small groups, where we name ourselves after some theme -- today's was fruits or vegetables, my group (three girls and another volunteer) picked the "Cherry Berry Peaches" :o) -- and get to know each other a little. Then we rotate to different skill stations -- the first week the stations had to do with passing, the second was setting and serving, this week it was positions and scoring -- though there's always a 'free time' station where you go outside and can do whatever you want, and an art station where you draw something to do with that day's virtue. The kids are K-5, which is an energetic bunch and willful but beyond that I'm SO grateful that they haven't hit puberty yet -- which is when the REAL attitude comes out, as I recall!! We do that until about 11:00 when they break out the snacks, and then you can mess around again until about 11:30, when they re-gather to talk about what they've learned, tell 'positive tattles' and give awards -- one for each gender in the volunteers and one for each gender in the kids.

I got the female volunteer award last week. Basically for my group they gave me two of the real rambunctious kids, one the more petulant kids, and then a real sweetheart helper-type kid -- all boys -- all different races, though relatively similar in age. I was pretty cowed at first. They were so aware of who they were assigning to me and the absolute patience I was going to have to have that they said I didn't have to do any of the skill drills -- we could just stay outside where they could run themselves ragged! And it was true -- when I told them, one grabbed a soccer ball, one grabbed a basket ball, one grabbed a volleyball and one grabbed a hoola hoop -- and they promptly scattered to the four compass points!!! They're not real strict about them having to do any one thing, but obviously I need to keep an eye on all of them -- which was a trial itself. Every now and then one would bolt inside without asking -- to use the bathroom or just out of curiosity -- and I was torn between leaving the other three to chase the one down or not knowing where the one was -- but there was always another volunteer who swooped in and helped me out. Justin and Curt -- the two people who run the show -- were impressed with my patience -- as was I, actually, I was able to hang in there all morning without tears, fists, fighting, boo-boos, or true disappearances -- and that was just on my part ;o) -- so they gave me that day's award.

Anyway, as the morning goes by you don't notice how much energy you're expending -- physical AND emotional -- it's only when you finally stop that you realized you're about to collapse -- as I'm sure you all know. I've been astonished the past two weekends at how wrecked I've been -- for the WHOLE weekend -- after volunteering. So this weekend I took matters into my own hands and bought a jamba juice (the name for the local fresh-fruit-smoothie chain) with an energy boost (added vitamins and herbal remedies to lend extra energy) afterwards and it seems to have worked...I was tired but not destroyed!!

So that's how it's going. We have next weekend off due to the holiday and then three more weekends after that, and then after that they switch sports. Since it doesn't actually require a great deal of skill, I might stick with it even when it's basketball or soccer...not sure yet. I'm not shocked at how little giving up a Saturday morning of sleeping in bothers me compared to all the goofy, loud, hopeful, sweet fun that's replaced it.