Our Story
Our story
It started with one afternoon on the rug.
A few years ago, our life looked like a lot of lives across the Midwest. Riley worked long shifts in hospitality. Avery chased quarterly targets in tech sales. We were good at our jobs, proud of the work, and always a little tired. The plan was simple: work hard, climb the ladder, figure out the rest later.
Then "later" showed up early. Our first little bun wasn't planned, and turned our world upside down in the best possible way. Then came our second. Our home got louder, our hearts got bigger, and our calendars got impossible.
We'd love to tell you we handled it gracefully. We didn't. When the day got hard, we reached for whatever worked fastest. The iPad came out at dinner. A new toy appeared when a meltdown started in the store aisle. A show bought us twenty more minutes to answer one more email. None of it felt wrong at the time. It just felt like surviving.
But we started to notice something. The more quick fixes we bought, the further away we felt. Our two littles had more stuff than ever, and somehow less of us.
All the while, our kids kept asking for the same thing. Not a gadget, not another toy. Just:
"Will you play with me?"
For a long time, our answer was "in a minute."
Then came an ordinary weekday afternoon. We were both working from home, the deadlines were stacking up, our phones were buzzing, and our youngest was tugging at a sleeve again. We looked at each other and thought: what if we just said yes? So we closed the laptops and got down on the rug. No plan, no screen, no clock.
It was the best afternoon we'd had in years. Nobody melted down, and nobody asked for the iPad. A blanket became a boat, a stuffed bunny became its captain, and the four of us laughed so hard we forgot what we'd been stressed about. That's when it clicked. Our kids never wanted more things from us.
They wanted more of us.
That afternoon changed what we wanted, too. We stopped measuring our life in promotions and started measuring it in moments. Stepping away from the corporate climb wasn't easy and it wasn't quick. But every time we chose presence over pressure, our family grew a little closer. Eventually we both left our corporate jobs for good, to share what we'd found with families like yours.
Huddlebun is what we built from that choice. "Little bun" is what we've always called our kids, and a huddle is what happens when everybody leans in close. So every toy, plushie and game we make is designed for more than one pair of hands, with a part for the grown-ups too. They're not made to keep kids busy. They're made to bring families together.
And because no family should have to figure this out alone, Huddlebun is more than a shop. It's a place to gather, for ideas, stories and a little encouragement from parents who are choosing the rug over the rat race too.
We're not here to tell you how to parent. We know how full your days are, because ours are too. We just want to make it a little easier to say yes the next time someone small asks, "Will you play with me?"
So close the laptop. Get down on the rug.
Huddle up, little bun.
Riley & Avery