The Puzzle

It all started Christmas morning. A wonderful Christmas morning. Lots of presents and love. One of the presents I opened was a New Moon puzzle, a picture of the movie poster. Oh, how I loved it. After the presents were opened but before all the cooking started it seemed like the perfect quiet, relaxing activity. Some of us huddled around and started. Very quickly I thought to myself, "This is one hard puzzle." Two faces surrounded by shades of black and brown. 1000 pieces. The very relaxing activity we thought we started turned into a frustrating, obsessive compulsion. After several hours it truly seemed like we might never finish. We also realized that several pieces were exact duplicates of other pieces. Realizing it only after the parts of the "New Moon" logo that were already finished were reappearing. How maddening. What kind of puzzle has duplicate pieces? We thought about writing the company, I thought about giving up, but everyone wanted to press forward. The general consensus was that we would burn it once we finished...

if that would ever happen.

Days passed. We ran a rate of about 1 piece every 5-10 minutes for a while. Then, it was time for us to make the long 14 hour drive home, puzzle still incomplete. We drove home knowing that Mom, Linda, Sarah and Kris would continue to work on it. It was coming together after all. Several hours into the drive I received the following message on my phone from Sarah...

"Peace on Earth"

It looks perfect in the picture, but if you look really, really close you'll notice pieces missing. It was finished, but imagine the frustration. Duplicate peices, and them some missing. Stupid puzzle.

Then, imagine my surprise when I received this package a few days ago. What could it be?

What?????????????????

The Completed Puzzle

Apparently the missing pieces really bothered Linda. She went and bought another New Moon puzzle. Mom and Linda sifted through all the puzzle pieces to find the pattern on Edward's shirt. After trying only 5 pieces, it was over. DONE.

The best part- Linda took the second one back to the store (with duplicates from the first) and got her money back. HAHA!!!!!!!!!!

The puzzle is now sealed with mod podge. A card came with the package from Linda and it read  "To the victor goes the spoils! You both worked so hard on this- Gabe almost obsessively! You deserve the trophy!"