Wednesday, January 22, 2014

A Puzzling Matter

Lately we've  been into puzzles.  That sounds healthy and smart, right???  Haha.  That's not why we've been into them.  Although, they are a fun way to spend family time together with no screens involved.  Fun, that is, if you like being driven crazy one small piece of cardboard at a time.  And if you enjoy seeing just how dumb you are.  And how you lack spatial reasoning.  And if you enjoy reaffirming that the part of your brain responsible for mathematics is totally missing.   But maybe those are just personal issues.

I bought a couple of cool puzzles for Christmas gifts to all the kids.  Cobble Hill makes lovely puzzles.  They are labeled for different ages and then they have ones like the below pictured labeled "Family Puzzle". 
 It comes with three different sizes of pieces--large, medium and small.
 The obvious idea is that the small children can enjoy a puzzle that offers a challenge to older children and adults as well.  The issue here is that I joyfully worked away at all those large pieces and then left the harder stuff for the kids.  It was so satisfying to be successful for once!
 This particular puzzle made us all hungry for candy!  The colors were so vibrant.
 There were a lot of puzzling breaks taken--Chess and "Bop it" were the other popular games of the winter break.
 This is another puzzle we worked on over break.  It got finished because we were able to beg some  help from Daddy.  The puzzle I showed you at the top was about 75% worked when it got mostly ruined.  I didn't have the heart to keep at it and packed it away for another day.
Puzzles and Chess and what not are great winter time fun.  However--while the east coast is freezing and buried in snow, we are having a mild and dry winter--so the kids have moved on to bike riding, shorts and tank top wearing and outdoor fun.  Last week I caught them laying out on beach towels in the sunshine two separate times.  Not that it was warranted--being about 40 degrees--just shows you what kids with webbed toes will do.  I'll leave you with this gem:

Just in case you're wondering, the cute girl in the middle is supposed to be the subject of the photo--not the cluttered counter tops and refrigerator covered in school papers.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

toooo funny!!! my mother in law does puzzles during the football games at my in law's house(they have the cable lol) and so I've been doing them again recently and she just bought us one of those Cobble Hill ones for Christmas...okay can I just say hardest puzzle ever? I swear with the way they make puzzles now my brain definitely got a workout and I spent half an hour looking for one piece at times!!! haha!! some of the pieces are like flat sided but they aren't edges and some pieces didn't fit til you had others in, and I could go on and on...really crazy challenging shapes too! ~Cath

Unknown said...

Amelia would love that horse puzzle, that seems to be her thing right now. And Wyatt would want to help with the candy one, especially if he got to eat some while he worked on it! :)

Megan Miller said...

Love puzzles (and despise math??) but I can't get much help from the family (not that I mind- it's mine! all mine!! ;). BUT, I will share when you come down. Also I "set" puzzles but found out that no one outside of my mom and I say that - do you?

kdk said...

I bought my dad a 3-D globe puzzle once, and he got mad at me. "That puzzle is impossible!"