IT IS FINISHED...

I finished this puzzle!!! Yippee!!! Hooray!!! Oh My Goodness!!! What a great feeling!!! I called Katelyn last night as soon as I finished this puzzle. She got it from her mom for Christmas. Katelyn is a huge Twilight fan. We gave her the Twilight game. Andie and Michael gave her Twilight paper plates. At Thanksgiving she brought the Twilight movie for us to watch. Yep, Katelyn loves Twilight. When Katelyn arrived we pulled out this puzzle on Sunday afternoon, December 20th. We thought we would quickly get it put together before the family came for Christmas. Then we would open on Christmas Day the puzzle I bought for the family to work on. That is a tradition with our family. So we started it on Sunday the 20th. It was not finished by the time family started to arrive for Christmas. It was not finished on Christmas Day. We were all getting a little frustrated. What appears to be an easy puzzle turned out to almost be our nemesis. The pieces are very similar in color in several sections. A few of the pieces are cut exactly the same shape. This makes it possible to put a piece it and have it appear to fit perfectly so you continue to work around it. Then you get to a spot and you have NO pieces of the shape you need. So you peruse the puzzle until you find what might possibly be out-of-place. You destroy that part of the puzzle and try it again. Christmas Day Michael took my cutting board for my rotary cutter and slid the Jacob from New Moon puzzle onto it and we hid it under my bed. Then we started the puzzle I bought for Christmas. It was completed by Christmas evening. It had images hidden in the puzzle that you were to find after you completed the puzzle. The humorous part was that when you opened the box to the puzzle the picture folded out on the inside of the lid. It was a long, narrow puzzle in shape. Inside this lid with the picture of the full puzzle was a box with the answers to where the hidden things were on the completed puzzle!!! There was no searching, just follow their diagram and there were your answers. After Christmas, we brought the Jacob puzzle back out for a bit. Eventually putting it back under the bed again so we could have New Year's Day dinner and the day after at the dining room table. Last night Claude moved my coffee table back into the living room for me. I opened the wings on the sides and we brought the Jacob puzzle back out from under our bed. I would not be defeated by this puzzle. I don't think I have ever tossed a puzzle back in the box without completing it. That just goes against my nature. With an evening to sit in front of the TV I thought I could surely figure this puzzle out. It turns out that the light on the ceiling fan in the living room is a much better light to work under than the chandelier in the dining room. Also, having the puzzle on the green background while under this light helped to really show were possible problems were in where pieces had been fit together. Mind you we only had 10 possible pieces left in two spots on this puzzle (5 in each spot). I removed the bad place on his back (ooohh, that does not sound right) and started to work there. After a bit I had those pieces fitting correctly. I took little delight in this as past experience had shown there was a HUGE possibility there might be problems with what I thought was right. But I pressed on to his hair and found what I thought should be changed in that area, took out those pieces and set to work putting it back together again. When I finished I looked at Claude and he looked at me and said, "You got it, didn't you!" I was utterly delighted. I hopped right up and called Miss Katelyn. She asked for a picture. Then I called Andie. Michael answered the phone and asked him to please share with Andie that the Jacob puzzle was complete. Michael said, "What did you do, melt it down and pour it into place?" Then he suggested I place it in Claude's smoker so it can burn up the next time he cooks something in it. Can you tell we all had strong feelings after spending many hours pouring over this puzzle. I think I'll save it and get some puzzle glue and glue it together to give back to Katelyn. She could put Jacob on her wall, or not. But I really don't want anyone else to suffer through making this puzzle again!!