Daddy's Critters

 When Tracey Ann was less than a week old, Hubby ran an errand to Grand Junction and he came home with a stuffed animal for Tracey from Cabelas.  I remember asking him at the time, why he felt the need to buy a stuffed animals for our brand new baby.

And to this day, I don't really think any baby less than six months of age needs a stuffed animal... but I remember my Hubby's response.  He said that this was going to be something special to Tracey from her Daddy.

This was my husband finding his footing as a new father.  He was at a store that he enjoys -- Cabelas, and he was thinking of his brand new baby girl, and he wanted to buy her her first stuffed animals -- a grizzly bear as something very special from him to her.  Tracey got a Grizzly Bear.

Two years later, when Howard and Caroline were born, about two weeks after they were born, Daddy came home with two more stuffed animals from Cabelas -- a moose for Howard and a black bear for Caroline.

When Lee Lee was born, he came home with a Lynx and by now he had chosen a theme -- all animals native to Colorado (historically if not present day).

Hubby actually purchased the animal for Hunter before he was born, which Chris did not want to do -- he always liked picking out the animal after the baby was born, and alone.  But, when I was pregnant with Hunter, we were having fun with our four children in the toy department of Cabelas the summer before Hunter was born, and Hubby found an Otter... and he knew immediately that had to be the animal for our 5th baby because that is Hubby's favorite animal and he had never seen an Otter for sale before in the Cabelas stuffed animal department.

When Brady was born, it took a little longer, but by the time Brady was 6 weeks old, Hubby had gone to Cabelas and come home with a Wolf -- because he completes our pack.

These are stuffed animals that often mean more to me than the do to the children.  A few years ago, I asked the children to sort through stuffed animals because we were going to sell some at a garage sale.  I had to tell the kids they were not allowed to put the stuffed animals from Daddy in the garage sale pile because Daddy bought them each a special animal soon after they were born.

After having heard the stories repeated over the years (and watching Daddy come home with a different animal for each new baby), they understand how special these animals are.

So, now that our pack is complete, I have been trying to take a picture of Daddy's critters... with their critters.  I may have to put one of these pictures onto a mug or something because they make me really happy.