Wow!  It has been a long road to get to this point, but I am happy to report that my family and I are finally settled into our new home in metro Atlanta.  We closed on our new home on September 13th, moved in on September 14th, and have been busy as all get out ever since!  LOL  Here’s a quick recap:

We worked endlessly trying to get the house unpacked and ready for the onslaught of both Randy’s and my families for the Thanksgiving holiday.  We made it…barely.  Finished putting the last finishing touches on the house the day my brother, sister in law, and niece arrived, but hey, we did it!  We had a wonderful time with the family visiting and then hosting Thanksgiving dinner in our new home, but boy was it exhausting.  After the Thanksgiving holiday, we quickly got into holiday mode and celebrated Hannukah and Christmas for the first time this year since Derek is now old enough to “get it.”  And boy did he get it….after the 2nd night of Hannukah he decided this was A-okay with him, and demanded to open presents each night.  LOL  Christmas was also nice with everyone in Randy’s family with us on Christmas Eve day to exchange gifts and let the kids play.  Everyone had a great time, and we capped the afternoon with a surprise revealing of our big news – baby #2 is on the way and is expected to make his / her appearance in early August.  We are very excited.

Right after Thanksgiving was over and we had a moment to breath, I finally was able to put up my puzzle in its new home.  I am SOO excited to finally have a dedicated room to doing the puzzle where I don’t have to constantly roll it up and put it away to get it out of the way.  Now I just close the door and it all stays right where I left it.  It’s awesome.  It has really facilitated my being able to work on it more consistently.

I decided to buy a large piece of pressboard to put the puzzle on so that I didn’t have to keep using the puzzle roll.  While the puzzle roll is awesome and does a great job of keeping your puzzle together, the felt that it sits on is so ungiving that trying to move any little piece to make an adjustment and fit two large sections together was almost impossible as the pieces would not budge without buckling.  I thought it would be rather easy to take the puzzle off the roll and put it directly onto the board…boy was I wrong!  It was a painstaking process and not without its fairshare of casulties.  Although, in the long run I guess it wasn’t so bad.  I did have a bit of re-work to do, but it wasn’t too bad.  It only took me a day or two of working on it for a bit to get most of it back together the way I had had it on the puzzle roll.  It was well worth it in the end though because now it is being put together directly on the press board and it’s very easy to slide things around when I need to.

The following pictures did not come out well as apparently I did not have the flash on while taking them.  The room is very dark, and I have since gotten two floor lamps to help light up the area so it’s much easier to work on now.  I have made significantly more progress in the last month since I’ve gotten to work on it for several hours at a time, and one day even most of the day as Randy took Derek off my hands for a majority of the day.  That was awesome!  And something I hope to repeat again in the near future.  LOL

My goal for right now is to get this first section completed before baby #2 makes it’s arrival.  I think I might actually be able to get this accomplished since I’m already over halfway done with the section.

Okay, here are a couple of pictures…more recent ones to follow in the next post.

Thanks for sticking with me through this long, drawn out process.  I believe I will be making a lot more significant progress between  now and August.  :o)