Very Big Bears

Many of you have heard about my bear adventures up here on my mountain over the years. Bears come with the territory when you live on a mountain in the Colorado Rockies. We make decisions about when to take in bird feeders and how early we put out our trash for pick-up based on bear sightings in our neighborhood.

Last week when I took my boys shopping for back-to-school supplies they found bears they couldn’t live without. We were at our local Costco and they had 53″ tall cuddly toy bears. These bears are big, I’m talking crazy big. Big enough to completely fill a single twin sized bed. They were soft and squishy like over-sized pillows.

I had noticed the bears before, when I had been on solo shopping trips to Costco, and knew that my boys would love them. As soon as the boys saw the big boxes of them they made a beeline for them. “Please mommy, could we get one?” tumbling one off the top of the boxes into eager arms.

I was laughing “Where would you put it?”

“It could stay in my bed.” says Thing 1.

“No it could stay in my bed.” says Thing 2.

Quick look at me, “We would share.” says Thing 1, with Thing 2 nodding his head yes.

My next question “How much are they?”

“$29.99, so $30” says Thing 2, who is always quick to spot the price tags. “Is that too much?”

Inside I’m thinking, that really isn’t too much for such a large cuddly toy. And I’m remembering a very large cuddly toy I had wanted when I was about 10 years old that was $120 (with inflation it would probably be around $400 – $5o0 these days).

I smile, “Well, it would be fun to get one and put it on Daddy’s side of the bed to surprise him when he comes home on Friday from his trip.”

“Yes, Yes, Yes!” “That would be so funny.” boys are now bouncing all over and trying to decide which color of bear they want to get.

“Listen, we need to finish the rest of our shopping first because those bears are going to take up a lot of room in the cart” I now have their full attention, “So let’s shop and you two can think about what color bear you each want to get.”

Thing 2’s eyes become wide, “We each get a bear?”

“Yes, you may each have a bear.”

A small riot ensues until I remind them that my generosity might change if we don’t get our shopping done. Once all the rest of the shopping was finished and we are headed to the front of the store they had almost forgotten about the bears. Then I said, “Okay, go pick out your bears and we will go check out.”

They each picked out a bear as I tried not to fall down laughing. I offered for them to put them on the top of the cart, but they wanted to carry them to the cashier. Since the bears were almost bigger than them it was an entertaining walk to the register. Once we paid for all our purchases the boys decided the bears could ride in the cart out to the car.

One woman in the parking lot jokingly called out to me, “You’re making me look like a bad mother.” I just laughed.

Then we had the challenge of how to fit the bears into the car with all the rest of our purchases. The boys first thought that it would work to put both the bears in the passenger seat with them, but they were way too crowded. Only one bear was going to fit in there. Then I had a brilliant idea, I put a bear in the front passenger seat and buckled him in.

Once we got the bears home they were tucked up in the boys’ beds to be their snuggly pillows, I even tested out the comfort and they were great body pillows. I had no difficulty getting the boys to go to bed each evening.

When Friday rolled around, the boys were very excited to set up the bear surprise for their dad. The bears were carefully positioned on the bed with another little bird toy sitting on the brown bear’s shoulder. Then they had to wait for their dad to make it home from the airport.

It was all worth the wait, Dad was properly surprised and amazed. Then the bears were moved back to their beds, where they are continuing to be the favorite snuggly pillows for both boys.

Who knows, I may be using the bears to model some scarves and shawls over the next couple of months. I just hope the boys don’t decide the bears have to go with us on our next family road-trip, these are some seriously big bears.