Uh Oh, Count The Pieces To Your Puzzle!

Since yesterday was the first day that Allie completed the 100 piece puzzle entirely on her own, we left it put together for everyone to enjoy and praise. Unfortunately, Aidan wasn't all that impressed and is quite capable of climbing up on the table on his own. He managed demonstrate his awesome throwing skills to fling every piece as far away as imaginable. All of that is fine and expected, but here comes the mystery...bring on the spooky music...
When we tried to count the pieces as we picked them up, we never had the right number. The first time that we counted was as we were picking them up; we counted by tens and twenties, and came up with some odd number...over 100. In my house, it pays to put all the pieces in the box before putting the puzzle away, so I was really hoping that all the pieces were there. We decided to recount. This time, we had 3 helpers all putting pieces in and we tried to count by fives...yeah, not a smart idea, came up with 101. So, Aimee and Allie recounted, with each of them putting 1 in and counting by ones; surely this would be much more acurrate. 102. Hmmm. Okay. Mom's taking over...counting by two's and putting each addition in by myself, I thought for sure I would come up with exactly 100 pieces. When I was at 90, I could tell that there were just going to be too many pieces, sure enough, 102.
Okay, so enough counting. Allie wisely suggested, "I guess the only way to know for sure is if we put it together." Ah, yes, why didn't I think of that. So, back to the table we go. I'm almost certain that putting it together took less time than all the recounting, but we found that even with 102 pieces, we were missing 6 pieces (faces and clothing). Luckily, 5 of them were inside Aidan's bike seat. The other one is only a corner piece, and I figured when we find it, we'll add it. (And even if it gets set aside in the kitchen junk drawer, or left on its own in the game closet, no big...it's just the corner piece.)
So, our important bit of info for the day: a puzzle that is labeled as "100 pieces" may actally have 108...or whatever...might wanna count up those pieces, so that they all stay together, but don't worry about the corner pieces...eyes, hair, pets...those are the important ones you can't do without.