They thought they would get the best of me, but NO, I would not let that happen.  The dreaded, but gorgeous clownfish are now finished with a couple of minor pieces still to find somewhere (still worried about the solid orange one….I am 99% sure it’s officially missing).

I made a ton of progress in the last two days.  Amazingly enough, yesterday I got to work on it a bit while Derek was awake.  He kept coming in and out of the room a lot, but he has been trained not to mess with the puzzle, and he did really well.  I was surprised.  Of course, it still made me nervous when he wanted to put some of his toys on top of the puzzle, but I just tried to hold my breath, keep reminding him to be very careful, and he did fine.  It helped me get a lot of the remaining pieces knocked out.  It was so easy to find what I was looking for since I didn’t have 50 potential possibilities to look through and try.

Here are the latest pictures….I am estimating that I might have somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 pieces left (give or take a few).  Woo hoo!  My goal of finishing this section by August is most certainly within the realm of possibility.  In fact, I think I might even be able to finish this in the next couple of weeks if I can keep making such good progress.  I’m getting so close now that I just want to work on it ALL THE TIME.  I’m getting up every morning at about 6 a.m. to work on it for a little while before Derek gets up.  It is definitely helping with the progress.

And here are the close ups of the two clownfish areas where I am still missing a couple of pieces.  Again, the most concerning one at this moment is the orange piece on the tail fin of the second picture below.  I have looked everywhere.  :o(

Thanks for sticking with me, and happy reading.