Puzzles vs. To Do List

Hey there. I feel like I almost get caught up here and then the time flies past again and I'm a month behind again. It's been 11 days since I last had a chance to sit at the computer and gather my thoughts.  So I was about to get caught up but then we did a spur of the moment week trip to Park City over Martin Luther King holiday, which is yet to be blogged. I try not to be the party pooper when it comes to family vacations, but I confess I was bummed to not have a weekend with all my little chicks at home to try and catch up or, heaven forbid, actually get ahead on things. But instead we went swimming for 4 days and watched tv. We did do a 500 piece puzzle while we were up there. That was one thing I brought and wanted to do, since my love language is quality time. And cause I tried up at Wolfcreek but no body got into it and we didn't get far at all. That was a 500 piece puzzle of frosted sugar cookies. But then they accidentally opened it up in the car on the drive and pieces fell all over and got stepped on and so I didn't bother with trying to find all the pieces and that one went into the trash. At Park City it was a colorful puzzle with house and street shops. It was my second attempt at family bonding and it worked better. Lily helped me most, then Hyrum got into it a little, and Abi. It was on a small table so only 2 of us could work on it at a time, 3 tops. But I got my fill. It was fun just sitting together at a table spending time together an cheering each other on when we find a where piece goes. And since we're back at home now and I can now get all those things done that I want to... I've decided it's a good opportunity to continue to waste time by keeping up our new hobby of doing puzzles. Poor Natalie has had to take over doing dishes this afternoon cause I was too busy wasting time.

She was just chit chatting away with me in her sweet little 4 year old voice, she's so cute.

She really wanted to do the dishes. "Dishes is an important job to do!" She tried to load the dishwasher. I let her play dishes for a few then I went and helped. But anyway, back to puzzles! Check out this one that we finished tonight! I bought this one on Saturday at the dollar store - 500 pieces and get this - it is just a puzzle of who knows how many one dollar bills and one penny on it.

This is how most of it looked this morning. I had pieces organized by their size and tried to categorize them by what I could see on them - be it a number, or the green series of numbers, or by the part of the word on it - United States of America or One Dollar...

We started it on Saturday. We did the border and the green circles. Hyrum worked on George Washington faces, but those were harder to figure out. Easy to spot, but hard to put together. The black circles with upper case letters were our next "easy" part. Everything else was hard. The 1's in the corners were the last pieces put in - Ethan and Wesley (who are two other people who both also have more important things to be doing) finished it tonight - 3 days later and we're done! We found pieces on the ground and in different rooms a few times, thus we were amazed that there weren't any lost or missing. I spent too much time on it today but it's kinda fun (and addicting). I have this other one I'm working on downstairs that is really fun - 500 piece bouncy ball puzzle. This is one that I would take apart and do again, it's fun to do and to look at.

So we did the dollar bill puzzle at the kitchen table, but when Ethan and Wesley finished it they wanted to bring it up to show me and they put it on a cookie cooling rack and it kinda broke, so they were fixing it on the carpet.

It comes apart so easily, ugh, the pieces lock together very loosly. Don't mess it up. We all said that if it got busted before we finished, it would be game over and we'd just throw it in the trash. Too hard, not worth it!

I was glad that I didn't have to finish it, thanks team. I'm sure they felt a great sense of accomplishment. I didn't put the last piece in, but I feel proud too. I helped them move it onto a more secure board - a pink art case.

This was a hard puzzle and we never want to do it again. So we might frame it and put it in Corey's office, to channel financial prosperity to his business efforts. All I'll say about that is that it is hard and Corey said it's the hardest thing he's ever had to do, and he's in the thick of it still, trying to figure out a way forward. Take one day and one piece at a time. I guess that's the only way we can go forward and figure things out.