Let it go.

Merry Christmas Season everyone! This is a very busy time of year, but a good kind of busy. We are really busy during Little League season, too, but I don't like that kind of busy. So we don't let our kids be in Little League anymore.

These last few days have been pretty busy for me. Last June the Bishop asked me to start making a monthly ward newsletter. He had a vision for exactly what the newsletter should contain, so I didn't have to do too much creative thinking. Anyway, I publish (I stole this word from my husband's profession) the newsletter every fast Sunday. That's today. Yes, they are copied, folded, and sitting in the library waiting for distribution.

But to get to this point took some ugly moments--or at least some not too pretty ones. Each newsletter literally takes hours to make. And I have to start at least 2 weeks in advance. I have become the ward pest. I have to call every secretary of every auxiliary and bug them to give me the information for the next month. (except Primary--Leslie emails me without even being asked!) I email at least 6 different people asking for info. I'm sure I'm going to be put on someone's "blocked senders" list. But the people graciously accept my calls and fork over the information. It's become a monthly ritual.

Well, this month the newsletter was seven pages with a one page calendar. So you have to think of it as a huge puzzle. I never know how long some sections are going to be, so I really have to wait until I have everything in to see where everything can go. I do a lot of playing around with fonts and font sizes. It's not only fun, but I need to in order to fit everything in. Due to extreme circumstances in one person's family, I did not get some important info until 10:30pm on Friday night. But I hurriedly did my best to fit it in and make it sound okay.

Saturday was one of those days that had things planned out by the minute. The succession of events were timed out almost perfectly, so to be off schedule would throw the whole day off. And it all started with me leaving at 9:30am for piano practice. The plan was that I would copy the bulletin and newsletter at the church while my kids were at their various events. So I had to have both the newsletter and Sunday bulletin printed out before I left. Well, our printer was running low on ink and the pictures were not printing out right. So I stopped it, changed the low cartridge, and resumed printing. The heads needed to be cleaned...BUT it was already 9:30am. Did I mention our printer prints kinda slow? So I didn't clean the heads, so the words were slightly smeared. So it wasn't perfect and I had to just deal with it. Admittedly, I was a little sad about it. And I was 15 minutes late for piano.

Saturday night was the big Ward Christmas Party. I brought some food and stuff, so I was there early. A member of the Bishopric saw me near the library and saw the printed newsletters sitting on the table and took one. He said something like, "Let's see how good a job you've done this month?" Lovely, he was going to critique it. Whatever...

A little while later he approaches me and says, "This is no big deal, but.." Pointing to a page in my newsletter he continues, "Is this supposed to be November Birthdays?"

I didn't, did I? I typed in all the new birthdays, but didn't change the title. See, this is the "December" newsletter. With all the late info coming in and printer imperfections, I overlooked a glaring "November" staring at me. UGGGGH!

So I took a deep breath and said, "No. I typed in the new birthdays, but didn't change the title. They are the December birthdays." Then I just let it go.