Saturday, January 31, 2009

We are really puzzled!

We attended a puzzle museum in town today. It is actually a private museum run by a puzzle master from Ulaanbaatar. He must really be a wiz! The puzzles this guy has created are phenomenal. Everything from little brain teasers to very, VERY large chess sets that are also puzzles (i.e. each piece, the board and the table can all come apart in large puzzle pieces). It would have filled a small room about 10-12 feet square. He has made thousands of chess sets and many were on display but we could not take pictures of any of them.

The puzzleman (don't know his name) has won the world puzzle making championship (yah, I know -- I didn't know there was such a thing either), five times and took second once. Very impressive.

Unfortunately, there were only a couple of things they would allow us to take pictures of.

The 'man' Elder Caldwell is standing next to is also made of puzzle pieces. The dinosaur was in the background of that picture so I enlarged it so you could at least see that. It is also made of about a dozen or so pieces.

They had a couple of small brain teaser type puzzles with which they challenged us. "If you can put this back together in ten minutes, we'll give you $10,000!"


The gentleman stretches a point sometimes but the gers are included because they have a lot of wood in them and do come apart and are put back together again. Hey, it is a private museum and he can do whatever he wants with it!











As you can see, gers can be quite ornate inside. The only thing they really lack (aside from very much space) is indoor plumbing. And they do, sometimes put them on a large cart without breaking them down and move them around, using oxen to move them. Kind of like our camping trailers ('cept we do have indoor plumgin' in 'em)!

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Pictures!





We finally received the last of the Christmas stuff! Boy did Christmas last a long time this year! Or was it last year? Anyway . . .

It's a good thing this one arrived late. As it was, Grandma sat down, looked through the book and had a good old cry! Then she got the visiting doctor's wife crying, too! Grandma's!

This is really a cool picture book! Great pictures and great job of putting it all together. We're goin' haf'ta keep this one!

We have such wonderful, smart, intelligent, thoughtful and creative children! Why, they must all take after their . . .