August 23rd, 2009

Last night, she went thrifting and came home with two new friends.  One of our new friends is Lotus. She is a Champs Build-a-Bear. If you made a Champs bear at Build-a-Bear, some money was donated to a children’s charity. Mom found her that dress in her supply of bear-sized clothes. It has ducks on it! Lotus says that she is glad to find a new home. She thinks that it is cool that she is going to be able to make so many new friends. Taft, one of our resident bears, says that he will watch over her until she gets settled. I usually wouldn’t introduce someone so brand new until they got settled, but I thought it wouldn’t be fair to introduce the next teddy without introducing Lotus first.
I now would like to introduce Briggs. I am introducing him here because I was wondering if any of you knew what kind of Build-a-Bear he was. He has the proper tag, but Mom has never seen him. A lot of my Build-a-Bear friends have species name—like how Lotus is a Champ bear. (I was bought at Steins, so I don’t have a species name.) But since Mom has never seen the kind of bear that Briggs is before, he doesn’t. She thought if I introduced him here that one of you guys might know. She does have a Build-a-Bear book that she can consult--- once she finds it! Briggs has quite easily fit in with our big boy bears. That’s what I call them. They’re almost twice my size! Most of the Build-a-Bear plushies can fit all the same clothes, but not these guys. Mom bought a little boy’s shirt just for Briggs so he’d have something to wear! If you notice, he’s pretty much too big around for that shirt even! I introduced Briggs to other big boy bears.
Roscoe is an American Eagle bear that Mom found at Goodwill a long time ago. He likes playing soccer. In fact, if anyone wants to play any kind of outdoor game, he is ready. We’ve played baseball outside for hours! Roscoe came to our family wearing a rugby shirt and holding a duffle bag. Mom gave him this soccer t-shirt because it fit him much better.Taft is a standing polar bear Build-a-Bear. (We also have Sullivan, who is a Build-a-Bear polar bear, but he stands on four feet.)  Mom thought that he was the biggest Build-a-Bear that they made! He’s almost as big as Briggs, but not quite. Mom thinks he’s probably taller then Briggs, but Briggs certainly has more heft! It’s an okay thing for a teddy bear to have. It’s much more to hug! But everyone’s special in their own way, so we’re all needed.
We wanted to write a long-ish entry because on Tuesday, Mom goes back to school. There is still plenty of time for hugs and attention, since we all can sit with her when she does her homework. There won’t be quite as much time to blogging time though, since she should be working on her homework when she is sitting on the computer. It’s actually part of our job as plushies to make sure she stays on task!

August 21st, 2009

Mom and I thought we would share something that we found while clicking through the blogrolls on various other teddies’ blogs. It is a website that is dedicated to bear blogs. It is called the Bear Club, and it is based out of the UK. There are lots of teddies on there. We thought it was kind of amazing, actually! We signed up as part of the Buka clan. We’re not exactly sure what this means, but since it’s free, we figured we’d make a go of it. Our page is here, although we don’t know if that link will work. We posted the post that we made on the 19th there. We probably will cross-post some blog entries—although not this one since we’re talking about it!

Mom also found a book that she thought she would share with you. It’s not much a book for me—it’s more for the web designer moms and dads out there. It is called Blogging for Bliss. It is by a lady named Tara Frey. It has lots of great ideas for blogging. It’s more about people who are blogging to sell something—mostly crafty kind of things. Mom thought it was pretty nice either way! It gives Mom enough confidence to maybe play with the formatting of my blog so my pictures can be bigger. I want to be able to show you all the cool things I see!

Mom wanted to include this picture today. It is of one of the geraniums that live on our front porch. Most of the time, they seem to just blossom one or two flowers at a time, but this one decided to blossom all at once.

August 19th, 2009

Mom has today off from work. She thought it would be a good time to write a post. We both thank all the nice stuffies who commented on our entry last week. On her LiveJournal, you can reply to each comment—but it doesn’t seem that you can do that here on Blogger.

We live in the Midwest. In Minnesota, there was a tornado today. Our Mom’s sister lives in Minneapolis, and I was worried about her. Apparently no one got hurt. I got worried about the tornado coming our way, but Mom says that tornados don’t travel very far without dying out. We checked our weather on WeatherUnderground and says that there might be thunderstorms, but nothing too fierce. I can handle thunderstorms. I don’t like them very much, but they’re not as scary as tornados! The sky does look kind of scary though, but Mom says that it’s a combination of dusk coming on and the clouds. I’m going to trust her on that!

A few nights ago, Mom uploaded some pictures from the past to share here. Mom has been taking my picture for a long time—probably as long as I have lived with her. These are the best of the photos. I like it when she takes me outside to for photos! Some of the garden photos in the album are from last year. The sunflowers and tomato plants are just as big this year. Maybe I can go outside later for a photo with them and you can see!

August 16th 2009

Mom, Milton, Caleb, and I are listening to an audio book. Apparently, they hire people to read books out loud and record them. We’re listening to the book, Phantom Tollbooth. This was one of Mom’s favorite books as a little girl. I am enjoying it. It is about a little boy, mathematics, words, knowledge, and wisdom. It’s really too complex to explain without giving the plot away.

Listening to an audio book is strange. It sort of makes me tired. Listening to someone talk for so long is very soothing. It kind of makes me tired. But I want to pay attention to the story, so it’s very strange. Mom has another audio book of our favorite author, Kevin Henkes. Maybe we’ll listen to that next. The Phantom Tollbooth is four hours long though. After all that, we’ll be awfully tired—maybe we would just sleep through the Kevin Henkes book. That wouldn’t be a good thing! Maybe we’ll listen to some other things beforehand!

August 12th, 2009

I have been posting a lot lately! I’ve got so many things to share! Today I’ve got two things to share. Caleb, my bear, got some new pants! They’re overalls, and they remind us of trains. I guess they’re not really new—they’re new to us. Mom found them in a toy bag at Savers. Caleb is a wee six inches tall. They don’t make a lot of clothes for bears his size. Well—not a lot of clothes for boy bears his size. Build-a-Bear used to make mini-bear clothes, but they were almost all girl clothes. he’s got a few shirts from some of the less girly outfits. They now make a few little sweaters and the such, but apparently bears that come from Build-a-Bear don’t need to wear pants! So this was a great find! And they fit him, which makes him very happy. (The last pair was kind of tight! He needed to wear a belt to make sure they stayed shut.)

My next thing to share is a beautiful picture of a sunflower that my mom and I took today. The sunflowers are finally all blooming. They are some of my favorite flowers and I am glad when Mom takes me out to the garden to look at them. We don’t really do anything with the sunflowers besides admire them. I’m sure the birds are happy with this decision. They probably enjoy all the sunflower seeds straight from the flower. Mom plants a few different kinds, but there is a whole row of these mammoth sunflowers. Mom likes them because they grow so tall! I like them because they grow so big so fast. We found a life that was bigger then a dinner plate. The stems are thicker then Mom’s fingers—almost thicker then my arm!

August 10th, 2009

Last night, Mom, Milton, Robinson, and I tried on the new aviator jacket, goggles, and helmet. Well, I guess Mom didn’t try it on! The three of us tried it on because it didn’t completely fit any one of us! I fit the jacket. It’s lined and everything. I especially like the scarf that came with it. The helmet’s ear-holes are too small for my ears, and my eyes are too close together for the goggles. I still think I look pretty neat in it. 

Milton tried it on, and he fit the helmet better then me. He has littler ears. He fit the jacket too. He says that he likes the helmet. Mom let him sit in front of the fan, and it looks like he’s being blown away by the wind. It makes the scarf look like it’s flapping in the wind.  His eyes are too close together for the goggles too—but his head seems to be big enough to hold them up. (They just slipped down on my head!)

Finally, Robinson tried it on. His eyes seem to be the right distance apart, but the helmet leaves space on top of his head! After all that trying on, Mom says that we’re lucky that we don’t really mind if it sort of doesn’t really fit the three of us. However, there are plenty more plushies who want to try to wear it! Maybe one of us will fit it right!

August 8th 2009

It’s been a stormy day today. There was a humdinger of a thunderstorm this morning, but by the afternoon it was nice and sunny. But after supper time, it was all gray and dreary again. Now it’s storming again. I don’t like thunderstorms. They don’t scare me as much as keep me awake. This morning, we all woke up despite the fact that we had more time to sleep.

Mom went shopping yesterday and bought me a new outfit from Build-a-Bear. It’s an aviator outfit. I will try it on and get my picture taken soon. It has a leather helmet and aviator glasses. The glasses aren’t quite as cool as the ones that our friend Nate came from Goodwill with. They’re still plenty cool. Mom might go back to Build-a-Bear and buy a t-shirt with an airplane on it.

I thought I would introduce another of our friends today. Shirley is a spring lamb from Build-a-Bear. Mom got her a couple of years ago from the Build-a-Bear store. Shirley is one of Fleur and Chloe’s friends. She like flowers and gardening. We went out to the garden once together, although she wasn’t able to get too dirty since she’s all white!