Round and Round We Go..

So Clay and I do our best to take advantage of what Syracuse has to offer and one of downtown's yearly traditions is an outdoor ice skating rink!  Yes..like in the movies!  We only live a few blocks from where the rink is built so one evening we headed over for some skating.  I don't think I had been ice skating since probably junior high when I went with some friends on our neighbor's frozen pond.  Clay had been before as well but not in recent years. 

The atmosphere was fun: Christmas music, a Christmas tree, a nativity set (we were surprised too!), twinkle lights, and of course happy people:

The giant tree is a real tree that is brought in; they have a tree-lighting ceremony for it, but I think its the Friday or Saturday after Thanksgiving and we're always out of town that weekend.  And just to throw it out there, the ice skating rink is the same place down town that the fountains were in the post with Brandon and Amanda.

Sooo, some bonus pictures that I'm just going to tag onto this post.  Clay and I went to the big cheese's house for a Christmas party for my work..its a fance schmancy party and his house is rather large so its fun for us to go and look around and mingle for a couple hours with people:

Finally, we had some college kids over from church.  This is by far the largest number of people we have had in our apartment at one time.  And let me just say, I completely understand now why parents act the way they do when large numbers of people are in their house: