A shoe, a carrot peeler and a rubber ducky.

Last week while visiting Auntie Donna in Nova Scotia, I saw she was writing something with her special zig markers. It was on the back of a puzzle.

Next thing I knew she was breaking up the puzzle and said "Here, take this home and you can tell the triplets that after the puzzle is made, there will be a special message on the back".

This was the box!! "400 pieces" I said to her, "are you nuts?"

It's a week later and we're back in New Brunswick and I called over to the triplets house to see if they wanted to come over to do this special puzzle. Caitlin and Grace and Mama came over. Mitchell didn't feel like coming over so he stayed home. He'll be sorry, cause he's good at puzzles and he missed a good time.


We opened the box and the kids could clearly see that there were bits of writing on the back of the pieces. There was a couple of little clusters of the puzzle that were still intact. Caitlin grabbed those groupings and laid them on the table in front of herself. I asked her if she wanted me to break them up. She threw her body over them and said NO!!!




We spread out all the pieces and started sorting them. Mama, Grampie and Grammie did the outside and the girls worked on the snowmen on the inner part of the puzzle. It should have been the other way around because the outside were bigger pieces, but they were all the same color.

An hour later, we've made good progress. The outside edge is done. Grace is good at finding those special pieces so everyone is telling her what to find for them. With all the stress, Grace is getting giddy and tired and needed a cupcake break. Actually, Grammie did too.

Then we carried on. It's another hour later and we're getting to the end. Time for Caitlin and Mama to have a cupcake break. Grace is showing her sense of humor here. She's giving us the Peace sign rather than looking for the piece.

After the break, we're down to the last 12 or so pieces and it was quite exciting. The kids caught grampie slipping a piece of the puzzle under his hand. We got to the end and there was a piece missing. Everyone blamed grampie. But Mama swooped her hand over the top of the puzzle and there was a piece that blended so well with the background, we didn't even see it sitting on top and she got to place the final piece.

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Yippee, it's done and it's sweet. It's 3 snowmen by Jim Shore. That would really look nice in my sewing room ,wouldn't it. It has lots of quilty details on it.

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But wait, it gets even more exciting. We flipped the puzzle over and the kids read the message that Auntie Donna wrote out for them. There were a few jokes and then a fun of a scavenger hunt. The message had the kids running to different parts of the house to retrieve special things. a rubber ducky, a shoe, Grammie's favorite scarf, a carrot peeler and their favorite buttons out of the button box. Then when they got all that stuff, the final clue led them to find the prize which was hidden in the kitchen, under the stove, inside the WOK.

They were little Boyds bears that Auntie Donna had sent up with me. They took the third Boyd bear home to Mitchell. Grace didn't want to hug it cause then it would bond with her and it might think she was it's mother.

When it was all over, they said "That was so much fun".

They loved their little adventure Auntie Donna. You are the best!

Post Note: You can check out Donna's blog here to read about the puzzle.