Since the girls were babies, we were given stuffed animals for most holidays. Each girl would get a stuffed animal from each aunt. I liked this as when I put out Christmas decorations, the girls would try to play with them and a few got broken. I started collecting stuffed animals for each holiday to decorate so the kids could play with the decorations and I didn't have to worry about them getting broken. I had several bins for each holiday. Of course with their collections we had Snoopy with a Santa hat, bunny ears, a heart and with a pumpkin. They also have Pooh and Tigger and Elmo in each holiday's attire.
A few years ago we toned it down and kept only the animals that had some emotions attached. With things in my life being crazy, there were a few years that none of the animals were put out. Last Valentines day, I put out some of the Valentines animals and my younger girls didn't even remember that we had them. I was sad that they missed out on that tradition for those years. I have pictures of them as babies buried all but the face in the animals.
I put out our animals for Christmas this year and we are down to one bin. My oldest had taken her favorite animal that was given to her the day before we moved from the East coast to the West coast 16 years or so ago and has it in her "treasure box." Above my youngest is riding that animal which my oldest named "Ruddy." I pulled out this little bear and my second told me I couldn't put it back after the holiday because she always slept with it when young and it was also given to her by one of her favorite Aunts as we left the East. She named him "Ebbin" short for Ebeneezer. She wants to keep it in her "treasure box" also.
This poor guy is a laughing reindeer given to my third daughter when she was about two and she took some scissors to it and I found brown fuzzy stuff all over the house and couldn't figure out where it came from. I didn't have the heart to get rid of it as it has such a fun history so the animals we kept were the "collection" animals and the one's that the girls "remember" while growing up. So, you can see them in the top photo.
We all have things like that..... I sometimes wish I didn't have so many thing that are hard to let go. :-)
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