As we wrote last week (see post here), we’ve been collecting giraffes since this summer in celebration of Tori turning five in Heaven. As of tonight we had 566 giraffes to donate via the Teddy Bear Toss thanks to Tori’s wonderful supporters!

If you’ve never heard of this or experienced a Teddy Bear Toss, I’ll walk you through it!

Everyone brings new stuffed animals to the game. We had three IKEA bags filled with 130 giraffes to toss (436 were delivered earlier in the day as they were in original wrapping and could be sent to medically fragile children, AND we couldn’t physically carry 566 giraffes into the arena, haha).

When the Bears score their first goal, everyone throws their animals onto the ice (or as far as they can, and then those closer to the ice help out). They are then collected by the Bears, staff, and volunteers. Click here to see our live video (and enjoy as my phone is knocked out of my hand by a flying stuffed animal 😉 )!

Once they get all of the animals off of the ice, they begin to count. Last year they set a world record with 34,998 animals donated. This year they smashed that record! 45,650 animals were donated! These stuffed animals are donated to various charities (I believe at least 40) in the area.

The Bears made sure to include our story in the “on ice script” where they thanked those who had collected large amounts of animals/had unique stories:

It was amazing, as usual, to be at this game. It’s Brennan’s favorite game of the year, and I think it’s mine, too. Special thanks to a co-worker of mine who surprised me by coming to take over as “manager on duty” for the last hour at the museum so that I wasn’t late to the game. She said she knew it was important to me so she offered to come in for that last hour!

What made the night even more perfect was that I was interviewed by ESPN afterward and had the opportunity to share about Tori and Krabbe. 😮❤️🦒 It will be part of a special they are doing! I’m so thankful to our friends Nate and Meredith (marketing for the Bears) for making that possible. 

Special thanks to Kelly and Angel for coming with us to help with the giraffes (and the boys). ❤

We are SO thankful to all of you who donated giraffes in honor of Tori! ❤️🦒 Team Tori celebrated her in an amazing way this year – and we spread so much joy in her name. That’s the best gift we could ever give.