About our family

From 2004, this is my favorite photo of us.

However, this one is more recent and more accurate

Welcome to the Hillisons’ little corner of the web. Jeff, Michelle & Hayley Hillison live in Cary North Carolina with our three dogs. Jeff & Michelle have been married since 1998 and our daughter Hayley is in the fourth grade. Life is pretty darn good around here.

We met at work in 1996 and Jeff still works for the same company where he is an accountant (CPA). Jeff is from Blacksburg VA and a raving Virginia Tech fan. His parents still live in Blacksburg and his brother lives close by to them.

Michelle spent years working in sports web development for newspapers, TV stations and other media groups. After years of working for other people, she now owns a small web development company, Game Plan Development, that allows her to work from home for only clients she likes. Right now she works most on sports sites like InsideCarolina and a number of sites for Host Communications now IMG College Sports plus a group of private clients. She has several blogs as well and is on a long hiatus from is going back to grad school at UNC in spring 2009. She is a madly insane Carolina fan from Chapel Hill.

Our amazing daughter Hayley was adopted and over the years we have established a fairly open adoption with her birthfamilies. We never imagined things would turn out this well. She was adopted through Children’s Home Society and we recommend them to everyone. She is the miracle of our lives, coming into our family after years of infertility treatments. Our path isn’t for everyone but it sure has been rewarding.

Hayley loves all animals, especially horses and dogs. She loves her horse back riding lessons and hopes to start show jumping soon. She plays on a U10 challenge soccer team that travels a lot (they won 2nd place in a tournament in Myrtle Beach recently!). Hayley is competitive and also plays basketball. In the summer, she swims on the neighborhood swim team and takes tennis lessons. She loves math, music, webkinz, Beethoven, any digital device owned by mom and any opportunity to get in the pool. She has a webkinz blog with her mom – she gets about 8000 visits a day!

We live on a quiet cul-de-sac in the suburbs. We built our home in 2000 and plan on living here for a very long time so we went for 3,000 square feet with five bedrooms plus a bonus room. Of course, it is full of junk already!