A man's home is his castle. Allegedly.

If this is the case, I certainly hope Mister loses some weight whilst on his deployment. After nearly 10-11 years, we have finally (nearly) completed the 3-D castle puzzle Nanaw sent us for Christmas back in the day.

An attempt had been made once before, a couple of years after we received the thing. Why didn't we try it out sooner? Welcome to Procrastination Central. I'll tell you more about that later. Anyhoo, an attempt had been made but was a rather dismal failure owing to lack of storage and the presence of small rugrats who just couldn't resist touchy-touchy/eaty-eaty.

So we put it away, until I broke down and transformed an occasional table into our family's Very First coffee table in December, 2006. Naturally, the first move by a resident of the household was to put their feet up on it (Reason Number One for why I never had a coffee table in the first place). In brainstorming ideas to combat this problem, I remembered this puzzle. I got it out and started putting it together.

Since its last breath of fresh air we added an extra rugrat, and all are old enough now to touch but not eat the pieces. So, all were welcomed to "help out" putting the puzzle together. This truly was a group effort.

All that awaits is for Dad to return in order to finish what he started all those years ago, because when you get down to the brass tacks, persistence is the key to success. Cliche, anyone?

Further stats and useless trivia regarding said puzzle:

• This puzzle traveled from Ohio to England, from England to California, from California to Georgia, and from Georgia to Virginia, for a grand total of nearly 14,700 miles.
  
• This puzzle is now missing 2 pieces. They are probably still in England.
• This puzzle is of a castle in Bavaria, Germany. My mom bought it because we were living in a country full of castles. In England.
• Mister visited this castle whilst on TDY in Germany about 25 years after his own father toured this castle whist completing a tour of duty in Germany thanks to a draft card during the Vietnam Conflict. He did not know at the time that this was where his dad was stationed.
• We bought a gift tin shaped like a treasure chest full of foodies for Mister's parents. It had a picture of this castle on it, but we didn't know that until years later.
• I bought a boxed bottle of wine celebrating some German anniversary (no, I don't know what for, I don't know German) and it has a picture of this castle on it. And yes, we still have the wine.
• This castle is the one Disney used as the inspiration for Sleeping Beauty's castle.
• The German prince who built this castle is probably the factual basis behind the "psycho prince" story for the "Curse of Darkcastle" ride at Busch Gardens Williamsburg.
• We live right down the road from Busch Gardens Williamsburg.
• I'm done now.