The envelopes run January to January which is a good thing because December is just so busy.

Throughout the month of January, I looked for new envelopes on the table in the library. But found only leftovers from last year.

On the Sunday we turned in our last envelope, I asked the deacon whether he knew where the new batch could be. He said he'd heard a rumor that they had arrived but among the other staff members, he wasn't sure who had them. He suggested we cross out dates on unused envelopes and write the current date.

That sounded incredibly silly to me but we missed two weeks in December while we were in Florida and I still had those envelopes (12/21 and 12/28), so I was able to cross off the '1' and the '2' and submit those on 2/1 and 2/8.

Funny how that worked out.

Then I asked the DRE at CCD pick-up whether she knew where the new envelopes were. And next Sunday, they were available on the table in the library.

These are different in that they don't have exact dates but have, rather, generic 1^st Sunday, 2^nd Sunday, etc., with a bank of 5^th Sunday at the end as needed. I suppose it would be too confusing to put the liturgical date on them.

I did "my thing" of pairing up each Sunday in the box and wrote the boys' name on their own numbered envelope. I might even run to the bank and get a bunch of fives to put in this year. The boys give me a hard time about putting the envelope in empty each week. It's just an attendance thing; the parish collects maybe only $50 a month in the kids' envelopes.

I don't want to stand out by being charitable.