Puzzle

Melodie got a puzzle for Christmas.  It's a 500 piece puzzle of a winter village.  Pretty tricky with all the trees covered with snow that look alike.  I got a little addicted trying to do it, it's a nice relaxing activity.  We had it all finished except for 6 pieces which were MIA because of little people like this:

Who like to take the pieces and line them up on the couch, or throw them on the floor, or hide them in random purses and baskets...

She was so cute trying so hard to stretch and reach for the pieces though, so we let her have them one at a time and just kept a close eye on her.

So the puzzle was almost done and we were looking under couches and cushions for the missing pieces, Melodie asked me "How many pieces are we missing?"  "Six.  Or is it 5?" and as I went to go look Joe did too and quickly sounded the alarm: "LILY!!!" Yes, the destroying angel strikes again.  The almost finished puzzle had just been raked over by two little hands that watched in amazement as a seemingly solid structure crumbled before her eyes.  She messed up a good 2/3rds of the puzzle.  

Mel said "Oh well... Hey, now we get to do it again!  But this time we have lots of help!" cause many of the pieces were still stuck 2 or 3 together.  We had almost pieced it back together within the hour, and this time Wes joined us and helped, it was fun to see him discover hard puzzles - he was really good at it!

It was fun.  After we finished we discovered that yes, it was 6 pieces missing.  Joe found 5 of them in a little bucket the next day.  So we're still missing one piece, not sure where to look for it, but we're lucky it's just one piece.  1 out of 500 isn't bad for this crazy house.