Jane was a collector of many things, sometimes without meaning to be.
Sometimes, it was on purpose, such as unicorns and Santas. Other times it became accidental, like with Vikings oraments or animated Christmas characters.
The oraments eventually became the Viking Christmas tree, and the animated characters just multiplied.
Her first was a small snowman that did a Christmas Rap song, we saw it in a store and she just laughed so hard when she saw and heard it that I told her we had to buy it. (It pains me that I'll never hear that wonderful laugh of hers again, but I have memories) That first one was in the early 90's. The next year, we found another one that tickled her fancy, and soon we were checking at garage sales and multiple stores. At some point other people started buying them for her and the collection just kept expanding. We have snowmen, mice, cats & dogs, a penguin, several moose & reindeer, and some that are difficult to classify. At the peak, we probably had over 40 of them! It took many packages of AA batteries, as most of them used three or more, and often several nights to get tham all powered up. The grandkids all quickly learned that they could play them as often as they liked, but only one at a time! Eventually, she started giving some of them to the grandkids at the end of each season, keeping her favorites, and of course buying a few new ones as she found them. On her last day, Laura was helping put batteries in her favorite ones, and playing each for her. We saw quite a few smiles that morning. My task today was to pull batteries, carefully pack them up, and get them stored for next year. It's always sad, but much harder this year.