The Parrillo Family

Halloween is - for us - still full of costumes, candy and trick-or-treating.  All three kids dressed up this year.  Eloise went as Alligator Loki.  (If you don't 'get it', she will gladly roll her eyes in your direction.) Sadie went as one of her favorites;  Eeyore.  (One of Winnie the Pooh's pals) And Frankie went as Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) from Jurassic World.  He even had a little 'Blue' velociraptor in his pocket.    Here's a look back to Halloween 2016 . And also to 2019 .  

2020 was a year unlike any other.  COVID disrupted everything and sent us scurrying home.  What started with Zoom Happy Hours and Home Schooling eventually evened out and some things got back to normal.  Including spending New Year's Eve up in Wisconsin where we rung in 2021 and hoped for better days ahead.  Congrats, Parrillos.  We made it.  This far.  Here's to an even better 2021. 

As we've done the past few years, we kicked off the Christmas season with a visit to meet Santa at Wannemakers for their annual Christmas Open House in early November. It is a nice little setup with the kids being able to meet with Santa and Mrs. Claus and the past few years, they've even had reindeers.  This year?  The reindeers were "sick", so it was a donkey - which is just fine with us! Here's the photos from this same visit in 2017 . Here's the photos from this same visit in 2016 . Here's the photos from this same visit in 2015 . You can see that SD and Frankie are right in there with the Big Guy.  Eloise?  She's over, a short distance away in her own personal, private space. Go flip back through the 2017, 2016 and 2015 photos.  Eloise has the same position every year.  Not too close.  Just enough to be in the photos.  Back in 2012, she was traumatized , I think.  She squirmed out of Santa's arms, but hasn't sat on his lap ...

This year, we celebrated Easter at home.  Or...at least at the place we live!   Last year, we were in Sea Island and were away for the first time during a holiday.  While being away at Sea Island was pretty great, it was awfully nice to have a the kids wake up and come down to their Easter baskets in their pajamas. We started the morning with baskets and then off to Church.  The kids loved what the Easter Bunny brought for them and couldn't wait to get home from Church to play with all their stuff. After that, we hosted the Parrillo, Coyle, Marini and Dyer families for a big brunch.  I even made a ham! We had the traditional egg hunt, but because of the rain, the eggs were all on the driveway.  Kinda easy to spot there, right? Look at that photo below of the five of us.  My...how much things have changed in just two years.   Look at the photos in this post from Easter in 2015 .  The kids have grown!?!?

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.

This year, we were able to spend the Easter holiday down at one of our favorite places in the world on Sea Island.  We've been to Sea Island before back in late summer of 2012 when Sadie was just brand new and we took her to see the ocean for the first time with the entire Moran clan .  This was the first time that our family was away from OUR family back in Elmhurst.  While we certainly missed them and missed some of the traditions (Can you say 'lamb cake' and Uncle Marc's ham??), Sea Island treated us right and we were greeted with some mighty fine southern hospitality and pretty awesome weather.   The trip included plenty of pool time.  Frankie didn't mind that one bit.   And neither did Sadie.  While she wasn't big enough to go down the big slide, she did get a little hot tub action. And beach/playground time. As part of our trip, we spent a lot of time hanging out at the resort and they're very pretty grounds.   And we...

One of our traditions is to spend New Year's Eve up in Michigan as a family.  We've done it since we were married and now as a family of five, we are having more fun each year. In addition to watching the ball drop on YouTube (from last year because we do it at 9 pm.  Shhsh!  Let's not tell the girls that fact.), we also eat ice cream.  And the girls make a "Happy New Year" video. Here's the first one that Eloise created back on NYE 2011 .  It is awfully cute. And below is this year's version featuring both Ellie and Sadie :

What stage presence?!? Here's Sadie really hamming it up at her Little Lambs Christmas performance as captured by one of our neighbor's camera.  Just look at those animated movements.  Nailed it, right?

Sadie helped Natalie put up the garland and lights outside the house at 222.  As she's getting older, each Christmas season gets *better*.  Between the Advent calendars and hanging up ornaments on the tree to LOOOVING Santa Claus , she's all-in this holiday season.

2015 was the first Easter season as a family of five for us Parrillos.  Topper was right in there with his sisters as you can see from the photo above with all three kids wearing their bunny ears.   Easter for us started about a week ago when we went to Ellie's school for an egg hunt.  Ellie and Sadie both got involved and we were able to spend some time with Ellie's teacher (Mrs. Estes - who Eloise just absolutely adores! and some of her classmates.  See the animated photo below for a peek at the girls and some of Ellie's classmates.   Then later in the week, the girls spent some time coloring their own eggs.  We blew some out and hard-boiled some and both the girls made their favorite color (For Ellie it was all pink all the time.  For SD, she went with mostly blues!) The Easter season culminated as it always does on Easter.  After opening our own baskets and going to Church in town, we went down to my sister's house (down...