HiHo Web

Oliver's 4th Birthday! Happy Birthday kid-o! Lots of celebration and hard-to-get shots of our oldest little guy. As well, Finn had his operation and has healed well, and the playroom construction has begun in the basement - finally!

Finally! Yes, the HiHos are still in business and still taking pictures...just too busy living I guess. Regardless, check out the updates - especially Finn's 2nd Birthday! Look how big the boys are getting. Do they really grow that fast?!

Happy New Year! 2007 was a really busy year for the HiHos. We had trips (Ottawa and Maui), we had birthdays (like Finn's first and Oliver's third), we moved to a new house, Jacky went to Rideau Hall to meet the Governor General, and all sorts of other activities.

Happy First Birthday Finley! The youngest HiHo celebrates his first birthday at a Hawaiian-themed party: tropical smoothies, "Hawaiian" pizza, lei's and Hawaiian print shirts & music. Finn laughed and clapped during the singing of Happy Birthday and loved his candles. He also loved his cake...so much so that he took to massaging it!

Thank you to everyone who has wished him a Happy Birthday!

See the photos in the Events area.

Maui Wowie! The HiHos travelled to Hawaii for Jason and Sonya's wedding (in the Events area) and had a great time. Here's a preview:

And in the Baby area (how can we still call it the "Baby" area when our little Finn is almost 1 year old?!) there are May, June and July galleries.

Happy 90th Birthday Grandmother! The HiHos and all the other kids, grand kids and great grand kids of Grandmother H. met in Prelate, SK for her 90th birthday party! It was great to see Grandmother doing so well and enjoying all of her family around her. Stephanie and Mary Anne - and others - put on quite a party..thanks!

Talk about visiting! It had been a while since seeing everyone so it was super to catch up...well, as much as one can catch up while holding a screaming, teething baby (poor Finn) and monitoring a toddler who's missed naps and is running on sugar :) Oliver found cousin David's die-cast Thomas the Tank Engine set and was in heaven...talk about a budding train engineer! And Finley had a bit of a rough go of it, but still managed to pull a solid night of sleep much to his parents' relief.

So we took some pictures of the event when we remembered the camera...the family shots are real keepers! See everyone again soon!

Crazy busy. Well, that's the excuse I'm using for having such a tardy update. Although, despite this page not always being up-to-date, those with a keen eye will have noticed that the galleries are still updated from time-to-time. I really must automate this a little more though!

Regardless, there's lots to see from the past three or so months. Birthdays: Alex, Bennett, Jacky, David's, Carole's and Clarissa's..they're all in the Events and/or Baby area, depending upon if we had our camera handy or not.

We also took a quick trip out to Ottawa to catch some of the lovely winter weather (brrr!). Promptly afterward was a lovely six weeks of some, nay, every HiHo member getting sick -- twice! Talk about down for the count..sure glad winter is almost over!

Finally, Finn is growing up so quickly. Evidently we've taken a million pics of him and darn near all of them are in the Baby area :)

Oh! And one last thing: here is a little video of the boys sitting in a chair together in Ottawa. Finn isn't really sitting at this point so keeps leaning into Oliver who thinks this is the funniest thing in the world. They don't really do much, other than enjoying being near each other. Enjoy!

Darren & Liz get married! Hey they're hitched and off for some honeymooning, but we've got the pictures from the bachelor party, the wedding and the reception in the Events area.

This is just a quick update to get the pics up as soon as possible for everyone who couldn't attend; comments and perhaps a video or two will be added soon...

Merry Christmas! Wow, what a whirlwind holiday so far...lots and lots of visiting, food, more visiting, more food...fantastic! More pictures posted in the December album in the Baby area and the Christmas time photos in the Events area.

Finley's Baptism and other happy occasions: Nadia's birthday, Leanne's birthday, Grandpa's birthday, Halloween, playing in the snow, Finley growing like a weed, and Oliver getting his hair cut are all recent events.

Our boys are keeping us busy, especially with Aaron going back to work and Jacky is now outnumbered for a good part of the day. The super-cold weather kept us holed up a home but the Thomas the Tank Engine universe and stacks of books have kept us occupied. Finley's colic has mostly subsided and he is smiling and laughing like crazy now. Oliver's "terrible twos" are making a temporary (?!) appearance, but he is still a well-meaning and fun kid to be around.

Happy Second Birthday Oliver! Our biggest boy is already two years old, and he is as fun, active, lovely and cute as ever. He had a family party on the weekend and his Mommy Group friends celebrated on his actual birthday; pictures are in the Events gallery.

Finn is growing so quickly. We've already seen some smiles, some hair loss (!) and some very impressive weight gain. Weighing in at just over 11 pounds, who doesn't love a double chin?! He's also working his way through some colic which has been a lovely time for his parents..ugh. Can you buy sleep? See more of Finley in the Baby gallery, with updates to September and October galleries.

And finally we had some lovely photos taken by Julie Marwood of Jacky's belly before Finn was born and of Finn at nine days old, in the Baby area.

Two weeks. It has already been two weeks since Finn was born. How time flies when you're up 24/7!! Of course there are more pictures of friends and family meeting Finn in his very own gallery in the Events area. And new pictures of Oliver and whatever else is going on in our lives are in the August gallery in the Baby area.

Finley is through with jaundice, his umbilical cord and crying so very hard during diaper changes. He was 7 pounds 8 ounces at day 12 and is a very noisy sleeper just like is big brother was. Oliver is handling the transition to big brotherhood in real style: always gentle, says "poor baby" when Finn cries and only tries to affectionately sit down on him once a day :)

Jacky looks great and is feeling pretty good. Dad feels and looks like do-doo...well, maybe it was the Return of the Squirrel in the Attic that has him in a sour mood.

Note: Late night debugging has corrected the photo gallery tool problem. Back to sleep now...

Finley David is here! Our newest little guy came bouncing into the world at 12:10 PM on a beautiful Saturday at home. Jacky started feeling stuff going on at about 4AM and proceeded to have the easiest labour imaginable (her words..really!) but worked hard to push out Finn who was sunny-side-up. Hard to do but Jacky made it look easy, with the fantastic support and coaching from Maura and Joan-Margaret (her midwives) and also certainly from Clarissa and Nadia (her Mum and sister).

Finn came in at 7 pounds and 4 ounces, and was 20 inches long. He has dark brown hair and a cute little mouth, but needs to gain some weight on those legs because as his Mummy puts it, "he looks like he's wearing skin pants".

Thanks to everyone for the emails, visits, well-wishes, etc...they are very welcomed by Finn's bleary eyed parents and rather wary older brother.

Will post more as time allows (!) in the Events and/or Baby galleries. Love to all!

Note: Yup, there is a problem with the tool we use to publish the photo galleries so there are visual inconsistencies on the latest photo pages...sigh. Need to find time to fix that. :)

Hiatus. Busy at work? Yup. Getting a house ready for another baby? Certainly. A little bit lazy? Yeah, that too.

The projects around the house took up most of the spare time normally dedicated to making website updates. But we now have a completed "big boy" room for Oliver, a new study for Jacky, a functioning storm door to the backyard, a completed deck, a re-vamped bathroom and assorted new furniture put in the appropriate places... throw in some over-time at work, some birthing-again classes, and some big occasions and you've got some busy HiHos.

Jacky has been steadily growing our second little one and looks great! Oliver is becoming very aware of some big change coming, especially with seeing his brand new baby cousin, Joshua. We're all getting very excited about HiHo Baby #2!

Palm Springs vacation. We took off on a little get-away before the trio of HiHos becomes a quad of HiHos (?). A bit of desert, a bit of lounging around the hotel "Casa Cody", a bit of having coffee at sidewalk cafes = a whole lot of relaxation and fun as a family. And Oliver made friends with everyone he met: the hotel staff, random retirees on the street, Rafael the waiter and the whole wait staff at "Mariposa"...what a fun kid-o! The pictures are in the Travel section.

Also, congratulations to Jacky for how well her book is being received! She read recently at an Alberta Writer's Guild event, has a Wine Book Club event coming up, as well as several award nominations that we are anxiously waiting to hear more about...Limbo is on:

More cute photos of Oliver and pals are in the completed March gallery as well as the April gallery in the Baby section. Enjoy!

Mini-update! The daily reminders for new pictures have finally sunk in. That, and taxes have been sent off to the gov't. Phew. Check out the completed February and March galleries.

Birthdays, birthdays, birthdays! Jacky, Alex, Grandma, Granddad, Tom...and of course the VonHonnets' newest addition: Bennett! Check out the latest in the February gallery and the Events gallery.

Also notable, Jacky's book "Limbo" was short listed for the Commonwealth Writer's Prize -- a very big deal indeed! After a very exciting and busy week of media coverage, the regional winner was announced at Pages bookstore. Unfortunately it wasn't "Limbo" but we are very proud of our HiHo writer-in-residence; Oliver is doing his best to let his Mummy work on her next manuscript...

Oliver has grown so much since we've put up a video of him, so here he is reviewing his animal noises.