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I hope you and your family had a wonderful Christmas. It seems the build-up and the hype lasts forever and the actual day goes by at the speed of light. My family was lucky enough to have my grandmother up from Iowa over the holidays. I know I have written this many times, but to watch an 88-year-old playing with six and four-year-olds is one of the most touching scenes you can imagine. I swear that my children were more excited to have their great-grandmother up for Christmas than they were to open presents. Thank you Grandma for a wonderful time.

I would like to take this time to personally thank all the people that pour their hearts and souls into making this newspaper. We have an incredible staff that truly cares about the area and I feel that it reflects in the paper each and every week. I would like to also thank those who assist from afar by writing columns and reporting on meetings. Bob, Colleen, Tom, Alice and Dan, thank you for your dedicated work. You help blend many different flavors into the County Press and make it special.

Now that Christmas has passed and people settle in for a long work filled winter, we tend to forget about those among us who are less fortunate than us. Please help out by supporting our local food shelves. Now that the holidays are over the need is even greater. There is a misconception about the type of person that uses the food shelves. Some people think that the only people who use the food shelves are lazy unemployed people who prefer to be out of work. I am here to tell you that couldn’t be any further from the truth. The food shelf is mostly used by people like you and me who for some reason or another have fallen on hard times. The food shelf is a way to help them through a tough stretch and they truly do appreciate it. And do you know that a lot of the food shelf donors now are those same people who had used the food shelf and made it through tough times.

This weekend is one of the biggest drinking weekends all year. There is absolutely nothing wrong with enjoying yourself with friends on New Year’s Eve, but please be responsible. Please do not drink and drive. Do all that is humanly possible to insure that you do not get behind the wheel intoxicated. Too many people lose too many loved ones because of drunken driving. So please enjoy yourself and have a plan.

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