Ice cream stays soft. Wonder why?

We bought some ice cream and thought we could store it in with the ice in the ice machine -- wrong. The ice was frozen solid in the bags, the the ice cream was soft. It's actually a little harder in my freezer than it was in the ice machine. No good way to keep it frozen hard, so we buy the small little serving containers once in awhile and eat it all at once. Can't do this very often though or the hips would show it.