Discovery Green

Dad and Donna came to our house for Christmas. It was their first time visiting since we've moved here, and we were so glad to have them! 

The Saturday before Christmas we went downtown to Discovery Green, which is a big open park area with a lot of activities and an outdoor ice skating rink for Christmas. 

The last time we went ice skating was last year and Ella wasn't crazy about it because it was much harder than she had thought it would be, but she seemed to have forgotten that, and had been really wanting to go this year. She had visions of doing twirls and jumps on the ice and eagerly headed right into the kids rink to start her tricks...

We happened to be there at the time when Santa was skating, and he was in the kids rink right when Ella went on there. She had just got out there and was excited to see him, waved and shoved off the wall to get over to him (just a few strides) and he caught her. Her legs started flailing out from underneath her, and he was a good enough sport to hold her up long enough  get a cute picture, and then he pretty much shoved her off and back over to the wall. I couldn't stop laughing, the timing was just so funny.

Then Ella was ready to go in the big rink so that we could skate with her (the kids rink was really tiny and had an age limit of 5). We skated around the rink several times and she did pretty well, definitely a lot better than last year although she still ended up very frustrated and was ready to be done after awhile. 

Enjoying a post-skate ice cream

Running around with Steve

Lots of fun playing on the playground

Pretty ornaments hanging in the trees