The tractor story

For the past four years, Brian has tamed our wilderness of a yard with a walk-behind lawn mower.  That's nearly two acres of mowing!  It took him about 6-8 hours to do the whole thing each time!  So, as you might imagine, we've been in the market for a riding lawn mower for quite awhile.  The thing is, though, those things are SPENDY!  Over the past few years, we've been gradually saving up the money for one (thank you Dave Ramsey!) and Brian started doing serious research to figure out exactly which one we wanted to buy.  He finally got it narrowed down to one specific lawn tractor and, after a bit more research, we found that Home Depot had it in stock and at the best price we could find.

We decided that we would go buy it on Sunday--on our way home from church if we had the time (I had a friend coming over for lunch) or in the afternoon after Maya's nap.  It turned out that we didn't have time right after church and so we planned to come back in the afternoon.  As I was getting lunch ready, Brian happened to go onto Craigslist.  What do you think he saw?  Yep, that's right...the EXACT lawn tractor we were planning to buy selling for $400 less.  A guy in Mankato had won it in a drawing and didn't have a use for it.  It was brand new and--did I say this already?!--the exact make and model of the one we were heading into Mankato to buy in a few hours.  Crazy!! 

Brian quickly emailed him and set up a time to meet on Monday (who has that kind of money acccessible on a Sunday?!?).  Yesterday, we stopped in at the bank for a cashier's check, picked up a trailer from a friend, and went to collect our new lawn tractor.  We got it back to the cabin without incident and both had a chance to take it out for a spin.  Maya was pretty interested...until we turned it on and she found out how loud it is.  I'm sure she'll get used to it. Plus, it means more time with daddy since he doesn't have to spend so much time mowing!