Having my brother and his family visiting for a week mid-December really made it a Merry Christmas for us, extending our holiday time, giving me competitors to play games with, and it gave us plenty of reasons for holiday snacking!

Some mood pics from over Christmas:

Christmas Dinner

Our friend Alex invited us over for his first Christmas in his new home! It was the most delicious dinner! Alex brined his turkey. We brought a green bean dish, a pumpkin pie, and some really dense rolls to contribute. I ran out of time for them to rise! It takes so much longer than you expect in our climate. I should have started way earlier but I got distracted by family calls and video chats. Thank goodness Alex also had buns.

Thanks for the wonderful Christmas Alex!

Jeff made another turkey on Boxing Day so he would have a bunch of left over turkey to make another batch of his turkey pies for the freezer. Yum!

This year’s puzzle

I like to make a jigsaw puzzle every Christmas. I picked this year’s puzzle out a few weeks back, from my friend Glynnie’s shop here in town. She has great puzzles!

I thought this one was so cute, with its quilt patterns and flowers.

This has been the hardest puzzle I’ve ever done. And I’m not quite done. On December 27th, I hit a period of, “I should just put this back in the box. I am not liking this. I’ve worked at it for days and I still don’t even have the outside border done. But then I would be failing. I don’t like to fail. No one will know I failed. But I will know. Keep at it woman.”

I pressed on. I put old sitcom reruns on my iPad to keep me company. This year it is Friends. I didn’t really care for this show when it was on, but now I find it so much funnier and have binged the series twice now over the years. I just find old sitcoms from the 90’s, and earlier, comforting. If I could find a streaming platform to subscribe to that would allow me to rebinge the classics from the 70’s and 80’s, I would!

Did I mention that this puzzle has pieces with a flat side, that aren’t from the outside edge? Tricky!!

Making some progress now!

And this week, when I returned to work, I’m on the home stretch! But I’m really suspicious that I may be missing pieces, because how do I not have a couple of those ones at the top. I fortunately am working away at it on the kitchen table, so my desk is still available to work!

I have another puzzle to do that I received for my birthday! It’s intriguing! It is a puzzle puzzle, where the picture on the box is similar, but purposely not the same as the puzzle. AHH!

Update: There are four missing pieces. How does this happen?!

I’ve looked everywhere, the floor, in my sleeves, under the table cloth, in the box, in the bag the pieces were sealed in. Nada. AHHH!

Hank.. was it you?