The Parrillo Family

We packed up the minivan and headed south for Spring Break this year.  Destination:  Florida.  By way of Birmingham Alabama.  We rented a lovely house in Blue Mountain Beach right along 30A where the gulf meets the white sand beaches.  And, we went with some family friends who made the vacation even better together.  All three families share kids with the same ages and we've spent countless hours together as the kids have grown up.   The road trip down was easy.  The trip back?  Much harder.  Traffic out of Florida up 65 on a Saturday during Spring Break season is tricky.  We made it, but not without a bunch of stress and some Waze-directed detours.   What did we do in Florida?  A lot of nothing. And it was grand.  We swam in the pool.  Played on the beach.  Eat ice cream every night.  Played Bingo.  And drove a golf cart.  What's not to love.  These kids sure are lucky.  T...

This past weekend was my absolute, hands-down, favorite night of the year:  The annual Daddy-Daughter Dance at St. Mary's of Gostyn in Downers Grove.  This year....if you couldn't tell from the photos,  the theme was a Luau.  Loved that.  No suit.  Just a Hawaiian shirt and the girls were able to get all doll'd up in their most colorful flower dress, too! Here we are out on the front porch: We went out to a nice dinner with some friends (see the photo of the girls and their two classmates - well...Ellie's classmates!) out after dinner right before we headed to the dance.  I love being able to spend the evening with two of my favorite girls all alone, and I'm grateful for the opportunity to do it with other Dads.  With Eloise being in 3rd grade, in some schools, they start to taper off in terms of older girls attending the dance with their Dads.  The good news is that at SMG, they have plenty of eighth graders there!  So, ...

We kicked off Thanksgiving with a "Black Wednesday" meet up at Solemn Oath Brewery in Naperville with our friend Mark, Matt (and his Dad) and the Morans.  Had plenty of tasty beer with some good friends. I don't post about Thanksgiving every year, but you can find a few year's worth of memories here on the blog . On Thanksgiving morning, Nat ran the Turkey Trot and the kids worked on their 'turkeys'. Then we got doll'd up and went over to Aunt Linda's house for our first tasty meal. And ended the night at Grammy and Grandad's place for our second tasty meal - and some quality time watching football with Uncle Frank (for me, at least!). We have SOOOOOO much to be thankful for and we were so lucky and fortunate to be able to spend the holiday (maybe my favorite holiday??) with the ones we love.

Two of Nat's good friends have kids that are *very* close in ages to both Eloise and our little Sadie.  They got together for a playgroup one day and the three babies are all girls who happened to be wearing the same outfits!  This was the first time Sadie was able to meet some of these guys. Might this crew end up at Benet Academy one day?  If Momma has her way, they will!

Thanks to our friends Meg and Rob, our little Sadie is snuggling up with a new personalized blanket all day long.  With these 90 degree temps in Elmhurst, we've had the air conditioning going full blast, so she needs the cover to keep her warm. Thanks for the thoughtful gift, Meg & Rob!

Over the weekend, we joined some of our friends at their daughter's birthday party in their backyard.  Eloise ran around, got in and out of the big castle-sized jump-a-roo, swang on the swings and even went down the big 15 foot slide.  But the best part?  When it was time for cake and singing, the hosts set up a table with all the kids sitting down with each other.  The Birthday girls were at one end and guess who held her own?  That's right.  Our little Eloise!  She was (by far) the youngest at the table, but she got up on her knees just like the big girls and took it all in.  She even asked for cake when they were handing out the pieces. Here she is on the bottom right watching the cake get delivered to the two Birthday girls.  She was (apparently) in charge of passing out plates.  Blowing out the candles.  Eloise holding her own. She's checking out what other kids are doing with the cake.  Didn't take long for her to figure ...

Eloise hung with her crew yes,terday over at our friends Gina and Sean's house.  It also was great to see both Melissa and Dan (for the second time in 2 days!) and their VERY handsome boy - who is growing up so fast!   While the adults ate some delicious pizza, the kids had a blast on their pretty rad swing set.   After seeing Eloise run around with the swings and attempt to climb the ladder, I know I'm under the gun to get our playset construction underway.  They even stopped for a half a second and posed for a photo! So much fun to be had this summer.  Can't wait for even more playtime on our own playset in the backyard.  Hopefully it'll be done by Labor Day!  Ha!