2nd try at this: The Lee Soptich Christmas Party 2009

. . . And we're off to Ensign Ranch (yes, that means that we've been up there the last 2 weekends) looking like the Beverly Hillbilly's or something for our Lee Soptich Family Christmas Party. The bikes on the back were gifts, as well as what Lee called "the coffin" on top of the car. I had also found several green and red bins in the garage (Lee is a shopaholic and now hides things so I don't know about them), so I decided to make use of them which made our packing a lot more organized :). The inside of the car was full to the brim (of bins and such) and of course the outside looked like this. Santy's sleigh was draggin' tail :)
As a disclaimer, I always have to turn my flash off while we're here or my pictures are too dark and it seems to make my pictures blurry, so I apologize.

So we started out with a delicious dinner of soup, salad and rolls, and then moved on to some "chillaxing" (new word I learned this last weekend).

After Chad got there, we did our gift exchange; Paige got this adoreable Tu-Tu from someone in the Stokes Family.

Here is Summer modeling her new princess shirt from someone in the Kevin Family.

Calley showing off one of her gifts.

Addison got a cute Tu-Tu too!

We gave the 6 oldest grand kids these (what we used to call) Hippity Hops for Christmas. They had a lot of fun with them (see video below). The adults had a lot of fun with them as well when we decided to play a sort of dodge ball game with them.

We took advantage of being all together and celebrated Kaisa's 25th birthday too!

Braden had fun playing with one of the ball pumps. He was basically pumping himself up and would make a funny noise when he was full - it was funny to watch.

Em and Paul got bikes and rode them around inside a bit. Lee and Emilee were having a little friendly competition on the bikes until Lee stumbled a bit and hurt . . . himself (those darn crossbars). Here's Emilee with her victory face combined with trying to show what happened :).

A cute sisters picture - one of my favorites for the weekend!

Saturday morning started out with a scrumptious breakfast; pancakes, scrambled eggs, fruit, orange juice and milk. Billy & Kaisa, and Calley were in charge. Here's Billy the professional pancake batter mixer hard at work.

Calley scrambles a mean egg! The cute apron she's wearing is one Jen made me for Christmas (except on me the ties wouldn't wrap around that many times) - thanks Jen!

. . . .and here's our sassy pancake maker - some pancakes even had chocolate chips in them - YUM! Kaisa's apron is one I received from Laurie Quist a few years ago.

The paparazzi at work!

Lee after having a little visit from the "hair fairies"

A sampling of all the "treats" we had there

Hard at work

Come and get it!!

Let the game begin :)

We ended up with a few "casualties", but all in all it was a good time :)

Chad is preparing to head the ball

Paige with her new pink ear muffs getting ready to go outside and play

Abby

Chad and Paige

There wasn't too much snow so we headed for the frozen lake and had a lot of fun. We would run pulling the kids on the sleds and then let them go on the ice - they went for a L O N G ways!

Billy pulling Addison - Bailee in background

Addison and Gracie

You could tell where the ice had cracked and then frozen again, many times over. The ice was solid as a rock! Too bad I'm not an ice skater :)

Tanner Man

Lee thought this teepee was pretty cool - I thought it looked a little too "breezy".
Lee loved looking all around and finding where the beavers had chewed on the trees, and where they had broken the ice to take their sticks down under the ice/water. He's an explorer at heart.

After that some of us snuck in a little snooze ZZZzzzz!

Addison wanted Nellie to wake up and play!

Emilee and I had gone on a bikeride Saturday afternoon and found this fun rope swing, so we thought it would be fun to take the kids back there to play. It took a while to find again, because it was dark by then, but Emilee was able to find it. We parked the cars so we could take advantage of the light from the headlights.

Here's Jen and Tanner getting ready to go double with Lee and Summer offering moral support.

Gracie was VERY nervous the first time, but once she did it she was HOOKED!

I wasn't able to get pictures of everyone. Braden (L) of course LOVED it and wasn't worried at all - this kind of thing is right up his alley.

Brave Paige

Brave Summer

Paige

Chad's feet

Chad

Grandma and Tanner getting ready to go double

Ye-haw!

Kaisa

. . . and Billy

It was soooooooooo cold!

Then we went back to the lodge, ate a late dinner, and had our Christmas program.

Calley and co. went first and performed a little kazoo ditty

Then a solo from Calley on the recorder

. . . and a Summer solo as well.

I was a little slow on the video for them - sorry guys. It's always a challenge for me to be able to take part and enjoy things AND get good pictures and videos. I did my best to get what I could :).

The Edwards-Kevin Family made up their own version of The 12 Days of Christmas (video below).

Kaisa played the piano while Billy was supposed to sing but he didn't want to go it alone, so Chad jumped up and helped out. I guess all those Primary days paid off - notice all his hand motions - this made my heart happy! (video below)

The Stokes Family sang a little song all together, and then Jen played the piano while Gracie played her violin

Nellie shared one of our favorite Christmas stories; The Shimmy Story (Unto The Least)

After all the performances were over Jen played the piano while we sang Christmas carols. This was another "favorite" of mine. I love singing Christmas carols and to have (most of) the family singing them together made it that much more special. We very much missed having Tyson, Scott and Sarah there - hopefully next year we'll be able to have everyone.

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYBODY!!