"It's only an hour a week"

There is a running joke between Girlguiding volunteers that 'it's only an hour a week'.  Now, I love being a Brownie leader, and I don't begrudge any of the time I spend on Guiding activities, as I do thoroughly enjoy it overall.  As I'm currently job hunting, my time is more flexible than that of my fellow leaders who are working, and so I don't mind doing a bit more.  But just out of interest, here's what I've done so far this year:

• Printed off information from an email about a large event my district is attending later this month, emailed the attachments to the appropriate leaders.
• Sorted out paperwork for every person going, I need a copy of every form and the event organisers need a copy, so I need two of everything, in two different piles, all in alphabetical order.
• Emailed a few people to ask if they can be our emergency contact for the event, I now need to type up everyone's emergency contact numbers to be emailed to our volunteer.
• Sent a flurry of emails to organise a leaders' meeting.
• Went to Brownies, meeting is 90 minutes long, I'm there about 15mins early, and then afterwards we had the...
• ...leaders' meeting for the forthcoming event, we sort out who is sleeping where, departure and arrival times, who is bringing what.  Meeting lasts for about two hours, but admittedly quite a bit of this is chatting!
• Sorted out the paperwork I received at the leaders' meeting, to add to my piles
• Bought some postcards of our city so we can send them to other Guide/Girl Scout units as part of the International Thinking Day Postcard Exchange.

Think that's about it!  It's a bit busier than usual as it's the start of term, and we have this event coming up soon which is taking up a bit of time, but when I write it down it makes me realise that as volunteers we are doing a lot.  An hour a week?  I'm doing that a day!  And right now, I don't think I'd have it any other way.  If the Brownies think they're excited about the trip later this month, they should have seen the adults at our meeting!