Happy New Year!

Ok, so it's already the 10th.

Well, to catch everyone up on my EXCITING life:
We had a great Christmas. It was one of those really meaningful ones for me for some reason. Not too much going on to enjoy the people I was with. We started out at the Chilcotts on Christmas Eve and did the annual prime rib dinner followed by some present action. Their gift to us was a trip to Disneyland in March. Woohoo! We opened presents in the morning at our house. The kids were pretty stoked that the "reindeer" chewed up and spit out their carrots all over the yard. We headed over to the Macs after that for the real Christmas. :) It was great. Our big present from my parents and Papa & Connie was a trip to a house in Sunriver for a week in June. I can't wait! We went to see "Water Horse" afterwards. Cute movie. Cheesy as heck, but cute.
We spent New Years at the Strauss' party. Lauren and Hayden stayed at Gramma Sue and Papa Jim's overnight. Kate came with us. She's a party animal.
Since then, we've just been catching up. The kids finally went back to school on the 7th. Christmas vacation is WAY too long in my opinion.
Hayden got a dirtbike for Christmas, so he and Josh have been riding it around the neighborhood. He can do it by himself now, which is good, but freaks me out. Josh took him last weekend to get his gear. He has a helmet, gloves, boots, shirt, pants, knee pads, elbow pads and a collar. He looks like a power ranger when he's in all of it. Pretty hilarious.
Lauren is completley obsessed with her new ipod. They watch a movie on it in her bed every night before bed. It's so cute.
Josh is getting into the groove of his new job. It's so nice to actually eat dinner together again.
Everyone is really enjoying Kate. She's an awesome and really funny baby. She LOVES the tv. I can set her down on the floor and she'll "watch" it for 10 minutes or so. She talks to it and smiles. She's even been sleeping on and off through the night. The other day, she went to bed at 11pm and didn't wake up until 9am. She woke up happy and didn't even want to eat until after 10. I kept wondering if she was ok, but she was fine! Really, besides being a little on the barfy side, she's perfect! The cloth diaper thing has really proven itself to me. I was using up some disposables that I found in one of the hand me down bins from Emily. She instantly got a little rash and woke up several times during the night. The minute I went back to her cloth, she was back to normal. It's a little more work for sure, and she doesn't fit into her clothes very well with the J-Lo butt, but it's totally worth it and I feel good about not needing to upsize my trash can.
I just found out that my sister in law Jessica is pregnant. This is not totally good news. She's kind of a looney and has all sorts of health issues. I'm happy for her because she and her husband have been trying for awhile, but I'm also nervous about what kind of freaky child they will have.
Well, I'm off to do more laundry. It's never ending around here. I'm blessed to have a warm house with a laundry room in it. I would be a really unhappy person if I had to use a laundromat for all this laundry.