Motherhood (After hours)

So, I'm sure you are all wondering just what it is that I do after Sammi has gone to bed. As many of you know, Brent and I stay up quite late. So the question is just what do we spend our time doing? This last week and some it's been a puzzle. We were inspired by the puzzle Brent's family did during conference and thought we'd give it a go. We bought a puzzle depicting Philadelphia with 1000 pieces. We spent most nights this last week working on it. I'm quite pleased that we finished it so quickly.

As we started the puzzle it was so hard for me to make heads or tails of any of the pieces. We started by pulling out the edges and putting that together first. The more we looked at the picture to match up the pieces for the edge, the more familiar my eyes became with the shapes and colors of the puzzle. Then we moved to putting together the most prominent and distinct buildings and then finally moved to the smaller pieces. At the beginning I didn't think I'd ever see where the pieces fit for all the little houses and trees and boats, but by the time we got to that part of the puzzle, I was ready to see them and could easily place the pieces.

I feel like this puzzle was a great exercise in creativity for me. It opened my mind to patterns and colors that moved beyond the shapes of individual buildings. I think we may have to get our hands on some more puzzles...