a few days ago, rin bought a new teaching tool for geography for when the kids get older. it's a world map puzzle. she bought it online and it arrived yesterday. we started looking at it and it looked like a pretty cool idea.

we decided to begin the puzzle to see how long it would take to do and before long, an hour had passed. we kept going. we normally eat dinner at around 5ish, but i looked at the clock again and it was already 6:30, so we put the puzzle on hold and got dinner prepared (pepperjack bacon burgers and steamed veggies), ate dinner, cleaned the kitchen and read stories to the kids, put them to bed and started back up. we finally got it finished around 10 o'clock. it was a tough puzzle, even though it twas only 600 pieces. the oceans had specific information about different countries written on them. we had to keep looking on the back of the box to match up the pieces in relation to where they go. some places i haven't even heard of like:

tuvalu
mauritus
the marshal islands

yesh, i know that i probably studied these places whilst in school, but it was good to get a refresher. it was also a good thing to have to show the kids where india and cuba are in relation to america. i told rin last night that it won't be so easy to put it together just to see where a country is. maybe we should have just gotten a globe...