Every year, during this particular week when we are doing our Top 10 Stories of the Year in the last edition of the Faribault County Register for the year, I sit down and take some time to write this column.

And every year this column is virtually the same. So I am going to start out with the same old, same old, this year again. But please, bear with me, and I guarantee it will be worth it. You might learn just how we work hard at what we do.

So here we go.

Every year it surprises me how much time and effort I put in on researching, choosing and writing about the Top 10 Stories of the Year.

One would think it would be fairly easy. But one would be wrong. First, I have to spend hours going through and listing all the major stories from each week. I start by writing down three, four stories from almost every issue of the paper that were pretty interesting, and important. My list was several hundred stories long by the time I got done. That is when I take some colored pens and start putting marks in front of similar topic stories.

Next, it is choosing which ones make the Top 10 List and then the final part is putting them in some sort of order, No. 1 down to No. 10. That might be the hardest of all.

That is when the grouping part of this task is happening. I start to see a pattern of similar things. Three cities talking about a new city hall. Different than usual court cases. The weather events. Sometimes I cheat a little, and force a couple of topics together, like Blue Earth’s issue with the Three Sisters and combining it with their issue with the Giant Welcome Center. Both are stories dealing with buildings. Four buildings actually, if you think of the Sisters as three separate buildings.

I really thought the Three Sisters deserved to be higher on the list. And, you know, I think they would have been, had the actual demolition been completed before I created the list. It would have been titled the end of the saga. It still is, except that it is just not quite complete.

And every year, in this space, I tell all of you that the choice is very arbitrary, and you probably have a whole different order for them to go in.

To be perfectly honest, I switch them around several times before I come to a final decision. In fact this year, I even switched a couple around right at the very last minute.

There are stories that did not make this year’s list, and certainly could have. Leading the list of those is the fact that we did so many stories about the county, and the cities in the county, creating new Cannabis Ordinances. To be perfectly honest, that was on the list once, but it got bumped off. You could call it our No. 11 on a list of 10.

Should it have been on the list? Probably. The more I think about it, the more I think maybe it should have been. If I had time, I would change it out. But that is one thing we did not have a lot of this week. Time. With Christmas Day and Christmas Eve in the middle of the week, we are lucky to get this issue done and ready to go to press. And, just for fun, we are going to do the same thing this next week, with New Year’s Day and New Year’s Eve in the middle of the week.

And it is not just me. While I was busy having to spend some weekend time working on a top 10 list, Kevin was also busy going through all the year’s issues of the Register to create a top 10 sports stories of the year list. Kristin was busy selling and creating ads and a ton of other things, Wendy was selling Honor Roll of Business ads and getting the paper work done for printing and mailing the newspapers, Pam was busy creating ads and other items for the paper and helping put it all together and Diana was busy with the front office with end of month and end of year both looming.

My point is that on a regular week, we stay plenty busy. Throw in a mid-week holiday, and, well, we shift into overdrive.

That is true for a lot of folks, I know. But it is worth it, if you are able to spend some really nice holiday time with family and friends.

And that is my Christmas wish, and New Year’s Resolution, too. Spend more time with family and friends.

Here is to hoping that 2025 is going to be a good year for everyone. But I just did some checking and Christmas and New Years are on Thursdays in 2025….