just call me sister, just call him coach

This week has brought some new opportunites for us. The youth in our ward are participating in "missionary week" and every morning they are meeting at the church at 6:00 a.m. for a 30-minute spiritual class followed by breakfast. They have been assigned to "missions" and divided into zones (classes). I was asked to be a teacher for one of the zones. So yep, I've been crawling out of bed every morning at 5:30 a.m. to put myself in Sunday attire, walk over to the church, and teach class for half an hour, and oh yes, to be cheerful & talkative! Quite frankly I've enjoyed it -- teaching the class, not necessarily getting up so early! I've been teaching about the restoration of the Church of Jesus Christ through the prophet Joseph Smith and preparing the kids to teach this subject to the families in the ward that they will be having dinner appointments with this Friday evening. We have good youth in this ward and I'm glad that I've had this opportunity to teach and share my testimony with them, it's been a great experience for me.

As for the "just call him coach" part of the post title, Mark is officially Ryan's Jr. Jazz coach this session. That's what happens when you go into the Recreation Center to inquire about why your son hasn't had a call from a coach about an upcoming game! Mark & I decided it was probably our turn to be involved parents, and since the game days and practices work with Mark's schedule, there really wasn't any excuse not to coach. There are 8 boys on the team and they are all firecrackers -- think Ryan multiplied by 8!! Last night was their first game and they won soundly, something like 28 to 4. Ryan scored a career high 10 points. Mark will have his first practice with them on Saturday. He's hoping he can contain their energy enough that they'll be able to have an effective practice session. Secretly, I think he's going to enjoy this!

In more sports news, Jared had his first game this week as well. He had a great game with 11 points (1/3 of his team total -- oh yeah, his team won!), a block, a steal, and a couple other fabulous statistics that I have failed to remember -- sorry about that, Jared. Jacob played soccer this week too. Unfortunately, he didn't score any goals this week, but he has improved so much through the season, that it's just fun to see his progress.