Family Game Nights – Keep Your Pieces

When we redid the TV room floors last month, it gave us the opportunity to go through all the board games we had stored in and on the entertainment center and get rid of the ones that we no longer played. We donated just over a dozen games to our church as well as the children’s hospital. We still have over two dozen games stored in our entertainment center.

What we did NOT have, however, were puzzles. I can remember as a kid my mom would occasionally lay out a puzzle for us to do as a family. When my own kids were young with had very basic 25- or 50-piece puzzles, MAYBE 100-piece puzzles. But nothing extensive that would take days to finish.

Last night CootieGirl and I were at Wal-star-Mart picking up some stuff for a school project on which she was working. I remembered that we were in need of playing cards (we go through decks of cards like nobody’s business. At one point several years ago we had 5-6 decks but none of them were complete because the kids kept losing cards. I saw some packs on sale for $1, so I picked up three packs to have on hand.

We were looking at board games (we’re always up for new ones), when I rememebered that I wanted to get a puzzle for us to do. She and I looked at various puzzles – 500-piece, 1000-piece, 2000-piece. Finally, we picked out two. She picked out the lone 750-piece puzzle on the shelf, and I picked out a 2000-piece.

Upon arriving home, she announced she wanted to do the 2000-piece puzzle first. We cleared off the coffee table in the TV room and I announced the process for completing the puzzle.

1) Don’t lose pieces
2) Go through every piece and pull the outside edges first
3) Sort remaining pieces by color and begin doing small batches
4) Begin fitting small batches into larger puzzle

Yes, I’m compulsive about how to complete a puzzle.

So we begin sorting through all 2,000 pieces. Once we confirmed we had sifted through everything, we began the process of trying to put the outside edge together. By that point it was the kids’ bedtime, so I continued working after they went upstairs, only to have CG holler down, "Don’t work on it without me, Mama! Wait until tomorrow!"

Well, you know I couldn’t wait – I decided just to at least complete the bottom edge. The length of puzzle kept getting wider and wider. It turns out, it’s almost 3 feet wide! But that’s not the point of this post. I got to the last of the yellow colored pieces only to discover that we’re missing a piece. One.

It’s gotta be in the box, but I did not have the energy to sift through 1,900 puzzle pieces trying to find the one.

So I’ll let CG do that tonight.

[amazon template=image&asin=B00OFOMSSO]