The Howerter Family Homepage

We have sold our house, and we will be moving out by the end of June!   Yippee!  We have not yet found a house to buy, but we are looking.  I have been packing some - china and Christmas stuff.  It is kind of hard to decide what to pack and what you will need in the next couple of months.  We have quite a bit of work ahead of us in these next couple of months because we have acquired qutie a bit of stuff out here in the country.  It will be an adventure trying to get it all done by moving time!

We have a contract on our house to close on or before June 30!  We are cautiously excited about this because there is a contingency in the contract.  The buyers tell us the contingency should be removed anyday now, but I know that anything can happen.  We started looking for houses to buy yesterday, and it was an awful experience yesterday.  Today was much better, finding one that we are going to go back to see again tomorrow.  I am praying that things will all go through, but I know that God has a plan for us which is what is best for us.  I just hope that His plan is my plan:-)

We had a couple looking at our house this weekend, and they came 3 different times for a total of 7 to 8 hours in just 2 days.  We are very hopeful that they are going to buy it.  They told us that they want to work something out, but they have to wait until the negotiations to sell their business in New Mexico are finalized.  They hope to have that complete this week.  We really think that they are sincere, but we also know that anything can happen (or not happen).  We are praying that this goes through.

On another note, we are heading to Las Vegas in the morning with Jeff and Judy.  We are going to celebrate Jeff’s new job.  We are looking forward to sun, warmer temps and relaxing.  It will be nice to get away for a few days and hopefully enjoy some gorgeous weather.  We are hoping that good weather will be here to stay once we get back.

Well the weather is finally getting nicer, and that always brings out the need to do some spring cleaning.  Since we have the house on the market, I am trying to get some things done a little earlier than I usually would.  I have washed the outside of the windows, cleaned the bathroom in the garage (yuck) and cleaned Annie’s cage.  We also had the carpets cleaned for the first time, and they look great.  John straightened up around his truck in the garage, but he still needs to work on the big part of that garage.  It gets pretty cluttered over the winter.  My garage needs to be swept out, but it will have to wait until this wind dies down.  If the door is open, the leaves just come blowing in, so no need to work on it today.  Some folks from Sante Fe, New Mexico, are coming to look at the house on Friday, so I want it to look perfect.  I know John thinks I am crazy, but I feel like we have to at least do our part to sell it!

We have put our house back on the market, so we have to try to keep things in order again.  We have been slugs all winter in that regard.  We have some people coming to look at it on Saturday, but they are looking at it for their nieces moving here from New Mexico.  Then, the nieces’ realtor is coming on Monday to look at it.  I don’t know what to think about that.  I guess we will see.

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! 

This past weekend Jeff and Judy came over for a visit.  We always enjoy these weekend visits so much.  We play cards, eat, visit and just relax.  On Friday night, Ryan brought Elijah and Josiah out to camp.  They set up their tents by our firepit and got to do all the fun camping stuff without having to drive too far.  Sara and Lily came out for a while too, so she got to enjoy too.   We hung out with them for a while in the early evening too.  Lily and I went into our garage to get a drink, and there was a big black snake right by the fridge!  I grabbed Lily and ran out of the garage screaming for John.  I got everyone’s attention quickly, and they all came running.  Of course by the time John got there, the snake was behind the fridge.  He pulled out the fridge, and there was the snake.  When Sara saw it, she screamed and grabbed Lily.  She told me that she was not expecting it to be so big.  The boys loved seeing this snake up close.  Josiah did not want Grandpa to kill it, but Grandma insisted.  John carried the snake (on a garden rake) to the woods with all three kids following him.  Even Lily went along.  I don’t think she knew what was going on.  She just saw her brothers and Grandpa going, so she wanted to go too.  Just another exciting evening at the Howerter’s!

We have been without hot water since Saturday.  When I woke up Sunday morning, I tried to get some hot water, and it never came.  John checked the hot water heater, and the pilot light was out.  He relit it, but it did not stay lit.  John checked the Whirlpool website, and it said to replace the thermal cupler.  John bought one on Monday, and he replaced it Monday afternoon.  He relit the pilot light, and the water was heating.  I went out to mow since I knew that I would now be able to take a shower afterwards. While I was mowing, the pilot light went out again, so John called Whirlpool back.  Evidently, this is a very frequent problem with Whirlpool hot water heaters.  Nice.  They told John that they would send him the $200 part, and then they would send a repairman to replace it.  The part would not get here until Wednesday, so the repair could not take place until Thursday!  The part did come yesterday-which surprised me.  We also got a message from Sears that we were scheduled for a repairman for Thursday between – wait for it – 8:00 and 5:00!  Nothing like commiting to a time frame!  So, here it is 2:45 Thursday afternoon, and I have not seen nor heard from any repairman.  I don’t put a lot of stock in Sears repair services.  We have heard from other people that their Whirlpool hot water heaters were not very reliable.  If anyone reads this website, you might not want to use Whirlpool products.

We have put our house back on the market.  We are using FSBO (for sale by owner) this time.  We are also putting it on the Chicago Tribune website to get some exposure in the Chicago area.  We have heard from many people that people in Chicago buy property down here for weekend getaways.  We will see what happens.