Big green tractor

This was a John Deere Christmas for Owen. I need to take a picture of him with all his John Deere gifts - he is running a large farm co-op based on the number of tractors and machinery he has now! The biggest surprise was the battery-powered rider from my parents.

I don't know if you can tell from this picture, but he really wanted to see how much power this baby had. He kept pushing on it and spinning the tires until my dad started to get worried that maybe he'd wear a hole through the carpet. The tractor was then taken outside and Owen got to see how it worked in the snow.

It's not really built for snow, as it turns out. It didn't bother Owen at all but apparently it gets stuck pretty easily and then someone needs to give it a nudge to get it going. We're just going to wait until its warmer out.

My parents brought it down last weekend (wouldn't fit in the back of our mini-van - go figure) and Owen saw it in our garage -I think he had forgotten about it. He wanted to ride it, of course, and was told he could ride it in the summer. How do you help an almost 3-year-old understand when that is, exactly?

Josh wondered if we should put it in the basement but I discouraged it. Our basement is not that big to begin with and is quite full of stuff. Tori has her Barbie house down there and I think she'd get upset if he ran into her while she was playing. And he most certainly would. Brendan's basketball arcade game is down there and I don't think he'd be pleased to have Owen ramming into him while he's trying to make a shot. Rachel would probably not even venture down to the basement just to be on the safe side. When the snow and ice melt from our driveway, we'll get it out for him.

Until then, he'll just ask about summer whenever he sees it.