The Day After Christmas

We had a wonderfully relaxing Christmas (except for the part when Anna came in our bedroom to wake us up at 5:15 a.m.). We opened presents, played our games, ate leftovers and hung out by the fire.

This year all our presents fit under the tree and we even had extra room. (I think) it was nice for Anna not to be overwhelmed with tons of gifts and for us not to be overrun with stuff, boxes and wrapping paper all over the floor. There was enough and Anna was quite happy with what she received (plus she has extra cash to get some other things). Anna played her new video games most of the day.

Frank and I have been doing puzzles since Thanksgiving. We love doing them but usually only do them around this time of year when Frank takes some time off work and we don't travel anywhere. I don't know how many we've done, but I know we've finished four new ones and have gone back and done several old ones again. Frank was ready to start another one. I told him that we have one in the closet that we have never done and we should have gotten that out first.

It has been in the closet for years and someone gave it to us. I think they had received it as a gift but were frightened and passed it on to us. It was not open. It is called The World's Most Difficult Puzzle. It is two-sided and has the same picture on both sides except it is rotated 90 degrees on the other side. And you will see that the picture is also not the easiest to work with. That is why it has been sitting in the closet untouched for years.


We decided to be brave and try it. Well, it wasn't as bad as I have been imagining it to be all these years. We finished it in one afternoon/evening. I guess we just figure out a good way to work it. Here is what we did:

Since most of the pieces have two pieces that look the same, we tried to match up any of the doubles we saw. If we attached one piece to the puzzle we made sure we had the other matching piece because then we knew we could flip it to the other side and turn it 90 degrees and attach it in another place on the puzzle. If we were working on one section, i.e. a skier, we would find the double pieces and build it in double (because the picture was slightly off compared to the other side so you could see which one was the right one if you had both pieces). When we had both sections built, we figured out which one attached in the right place, then we knew we could flip the double over turn it 90 degrees and put it in the other section of the puzzle where it belonged. The pieces on the diagonal lines from corner to corner were basically the same piece on both sides so we didn't have to find a matching pieces. It sounds pretty confusing but we did it! And will probably never do it again.


Today we got a little bit of snow. Not much but Anna and I tried to make the best of it by sledding down the street. We had to smooth out a path first to make it work and after a while we had to stop as there were bare spots on the street and things were warming up. You can just see some grass peeking up from behind Anna.



Then we also played more video games, trying out the Guitar Hero III (with two guitars. This is the only video game I will play that we have). Anna and Frank rock on.