We always like to put a jigsaw puzzle together as a family this time of year. As the kids have gotten older, we have been able to put together more difficult puzzles. Working against that is the fact that there are other very interesting things to do. Last year we got a little too ambitious and tried to put together a 1000 piece puzzle. It was not really too difficult for us, but there was so much other stuff going on, we never completed the puzzle. Kelly and I were shopping together on Saturday. I have to admit that I had completely forgotten about doing a puzzle. Kelly remembered, though, and pointed at the big shelf full of puzzles at a large department store. We rifled through them and found just the perfect one. It is a horribly gaudy thing with a 3-D image of some once popular cartoon characters with 500 pieces. Like I said, it is just perfect. It is my opinion that, for the Chapman family, 500 pieces is just right. It is not so hard or so big that it takes more than a week to put together. You can work on it and talk to the people around you, too. Still, it is not so easy that there are not some challenges in it. Really, we are enjoying it so much, that we will probably do two of them this year. Can you imagine, we will probably put 1000 pieces worth of puzzle together this year when that is exactly what we thought was our problem last year.
