the missing piece

Day 1

 For Christmas, Tolga and I bought the family a puzzle.  We thought it would be a good project for us to work on together as a family - something to do during these long winter days.  I had in mind to get a 1500 piece puzzle, but we found a 3000 piece puzzle that Tolga wanted to get.  I liked the picture too, but hesitated on it's size.  "I don't know, it seems pretty big . . . it might take us like a week to do . . .  well, I guess that's a good thing."

Day 5

Baba saw the puzzle and said, "I can finish this in one day."  As you can see, five days later, not much progress had been made, and I wanted our dinner table back.  Well, there is such thing as a "puzzle rug" that hold the pieces and you can roll up without ruining the progress you've made.  So we bought it and continued working on the puzzle at night after work.  Baba took more of a managerial position.  (The puzzle was too hard).  Anne tried really hard, but she just couldn't distinguish the subtle color and size differences.  Gokhan tended to obsess over finding one particular piece and would insist on finding the one piece before moving on to another section.

Day 38 - 2999 pieces complete.  

Well, 38 days later we finished our puzzle, but learned it was a 2999 piece puzzle.  We looked everywhere for the missing piece - in the vacuum cleaner, under the couches . . . in the end, Tolga said he would paint in the missing piece.

In the end, we slid newspaper under it because we were going to glue it, but instead we rolled it up and put it away for when we were ready to frame it.  March 3rd, we were ready to go to the frame store.  Actually, we had got a new puzzle for Anne, and we needed the puzzle rug. Baba asked Gokhan to get something out of a cupboard in the TV console.  Gokhan complained, and Tolga got up instead. Tolga opened the door - and there lay the missing piece.  Baba said God was helping him because he listens to his father.

So we brought our 3000-piece puzzle to the framing store that day - and hung it up . . . it's a little . . .  large.

the finished and framed product - (notice Baba starting dinner without us)