The Howerter Family Homepage

The sun came out today, finally!  It is almost 5:00 p.m., and it is still light and sunny!  Hooray!  This should boost everyone’s spirits for a while.  Hang in there everyone.  Spring will eventually get here.

John and I went to see the movie Sherlock Holmes last night.  Ever since I saw the first preview, I wanted to see this movie.  Since we don’t go to the movie very often, it took this long for me to talk John into going.  It was good, but not as good as I thought it would be.  It was a little slow for me.  The special effects were good, and, of course, Robert Downey, Jr. was good.  I don’t know why I was a little disappointed, but I was.  I really wanted it to be fantastic!  It is definitely worth seeing, though, especially since it is now a $5 movie.  Let me know what you think.

I decided today that I would get back on Facebook.  I did this a few years ago when Brandt went to Centrifuge near Yosemite because that was how he was going to stay in touch.  I really did not like Facebook because I just cannot seem to figure out how to navigate the silly thing.  I would get a message that someone “wrote on your wall” or “poked you”, but I could never find the place to see what they wrote.  I finally deactivated my account.  I decided today that I better get back on if I wanted to know when Brandt and Angel’s twins are born.  I signed up again about 2 hours ago.  I have gotten 2 messages since then, and I was able to find one quickly.  The other one took me a while.  I have been on it since then hoping to get more familiar with it, but I am not sure I am any more familiar now than a few years ago!   I guess I will have to have Ryan or Jay show me a few tricks the next time they come over.

This morning when I got up, it was 24 degrees outside!  Wow, it has not been that warm for quite a while.  I was reminded this morning that the days are getting longer, so warmer weather, and even spring, is coming.

As many of you know, I love the snow.  I am always wishing that it would snow 20 inches here.  Well, today I am sort of pissed off at the snow because I had to stay home all day because of it.  When John left this morning, there were 2 drifts in our driveway that he did not think my car would get through.  (I knew we should have bought another SUV.)  He asked me to stay home, so I did.  I guess it really was the wind that caused the drifts, so I should be pissed off at the wind.  The next time it snows, I am going with John to work.  At least I won’t be stuck at home.  Enjoy the snow!

Many of you don’t have ponds, so you may not know that there is an overflow drain in the dam of our pond.  When we returned from Europe in November, we noticed that the pond was higher than usual.  We assumed that the overflow pipe was plugged up, so we had our septic tank guy come out to try to unplug it.  (Do any of you have  your own septic tank guy?  Just wondering.)  He used some sort of blower that has a jet engine on it, and they could not get anything out of it.  This meant that the pipe had probably collapsed and was not going to be opened up again.  We called an excavator guy to come and take a look.  He told us that the pipe was too small and should not have been a plastic pipe to begin with.  Big surprise that it was installed incorrectly!  So, guess what we got for Christmas — a new drain pipe!  The pipe is 120 feet long and 12 inches in diameter.  We had 2 small tractors and a huge excavator in our yard on New Year’s Eve.  Since it has been so wet and warm, the tractors really tore up our yard.  It was a muddy mess, but now it is all frozen.  They tore out the old pipe and put in the new one.  It was fun to watch that big tractor in the mud.  When they were finished, the guy told us that he was not happy that all the dirt they had to use to fill in around the new pipe was wet and clumpy because it may not settle correctly.  He told us that if we got lots of rain before it melted and settled, we might still lose the dam.  We really did not want to hear that.  We thought we had fixed the problem and were out of the woods.  It was our only option, but it is still not safe.  It is in God’s hands now.  Hang on God! 

I hope everyone had a safe and fun New Year’s Eve.  We celebrated at our house with Jeff and Judy, and we stayed up until almost 10:00!  We are quite the partyers:-) 

This year is starting off quite cold.  We are trying to decide if we want to brave the cold and get out today.  Yesterday we did not leave the warmth of the house at all.  (In fact, Jeff and I did not even shower.)

Happy New Year!