Christmas, New Year, Clogged Washer

Long time no post - sorry about that. Of course, we were busy with all the preparations for Christmas and then the wonderful day of celebrating Christ's birth. We had a great day! Squirt and Button both got just what they wanted, and since we made sure to focus the day on Jesus, we were able to keep the gifts low-key. Regardless of that, Squirt was so excited and bounced off the walls from the time he came into our bedroom until quiet time in the afternoon when he did actually take a nap! Techie's parents, Grandma and Uncle J came over for brunch and we had a very untypical, but good meal. Everyone left so the kids could take naps and then it was just us for a few cool hours. Very nice and such a blessed day. : )
New Year's Eve brought time with friends and the kids had a blast with their kids. We ate some of the most delicious enchiladas that I've ever had, that were homemade, and visited. We actually stayed until after midnight - watched the ball drop in NY at 11, then watched the Dallas event to ring in the New Year. It was a really nice time and we are all still recovering from the effects of having stayed up so late. : )
Lastly, our washer stopped working today... I have a front loader, as does my mom and she has talked to me about having to clean her lint filter. Well since we have different brands, I didn't think I had one. Dumb thought! Today the thing stopped working completely with soaking wet jeans that weren't about to go in the dryer. So after a busy day working on other things around the house, we weren't able to look into it until after we put the kids down. Thank goodness for the Internet! It saved us a call to a plumber as I was able to put the brand, model name and pump into Google and presto! Up came all these responses to the exact same problem! Found out, we do have a lint filter that just needs to be cleaned occasionally - maybe more so if little ones (or hubbies) have things in their pockets. There was $1.19 in change, two memory cards, a key (for Techie's work), a plastic spider, puffed-up sticker heart, one of Button's missing socks, and pailful of water in there. Wow! I'm so glad that I have a load of towels to do so that it could get all the water that didn't make it into the bucket. And thank God for us being able to fix it! Now it's working like a charm. I guess that since we've been so busy the last couple of days doing projects that have really needed to get done, that this will be a year of doing exactly that! : )
Happy New Year!