absolute positioned div container wont resize

Hi

I have a div that contains my site content. The container is style
with position:absolute;width:800px;background-color:blue;

the content can form multiple divs each being uniquly positioned. Also
some will have lots of text and so can scroll down the page.

I have two issues:

1) How do i get the footer to always be at the bottom of the content div?

2) How do I get the container div to stretch so that the contents all appear in the container?

<div id="container">
<div id="header">my header</div>
<div id="content1">some absolute positioned content</div>
<div id="content2">some absolute positioned content</div>
<div id="footer">thanks for visiting</div>
</div>

The way I have got it to work at the moment is to make the container height: really big and then to absolute position the footer. but this looks silly.
ideally I would want the container to have a minimum height and then to stretch.

Thanks for any and all help

K

 

Addendum:

I have managed to get the footer to go at the bottom of the content by:

clear:both;