beah won the contest by guessing correctly that josh was doing a puzzle in the picture. sooo....even though i don't believe i have ever met beah, she and a guest are welcome to come down to southern california and stay in our charming guest room any time!

i have grown up always doing puzzles, ever since i was a little kid. yes, i've been a bit of a geek my whole life. in my parent's house, especially during the winter, there was always a large puzzle on the dining room table that we would hack away at. i've found them quite relaxing and very addicting. josh, on the other hand, doesn't remember ever doing a puzzle in his life. if you know josh, you would never associate him with puzzles. AT ALL. he just doesn't seem to be "the type" (in other words, he's not a geek, like me). so..this past christmas, my mom sent us a sea shell puzzle as one of our christmas gifts. i was thrilled by it, but never in a million years expected josh to participate in working on it. i don't think he expected it, either. since my work schedule has me working a couple of evenings a week, josh is home alone once in awhile and, without any sort of cable tv, finds the evenings quite dull without his dear wifey around. a few weeks ago i called him from work, and he said to me, "you'll NEVER guess what i'm doing right now." he refused to tell me, just told me it would be a surprise, and when i got home, there was the sea shell puzzle, all laid out and partially finished! i was absolutely shocked, but also a little excited to think that my husband might share in my Passion for Puzzles. i had no idea.

we finished that puzzle lickety split. josh would come home from work, kiss me hello and sit down immediately to work on the puzzle. time would fly and we'd occasionally forget to eat. once it was completed, we took a proud photo and then...we felt a little lost. what had we done for fun before our Passion for Puzzles took over? we couldn't quite remember. slowly, life turned back to normal. the puzzle was taken apart and put back lovingly into it's box. and then....my mom sent josh a birthday package. you should have seen the smile on his face when he opened it up and discovered ANOTHER PUZZLE! it even had an american flag in it! we wasted no time in dumping it out on the table and went at it with glee. we are now on our 3rd puzzle. i have found a nice selection of 1000 piece puzzles at the local kmart. sometimes we argue about who gets to do the fun bits and who has to do the boring bits (like the sky and the dirt), but for the most part, we get along wondrously well, working together.