The Happiest Place on Earth

Yep, that's where we went this weekend. To Disneyland, the happiest place on Earth. And actually, it pretty much IS the happiest place.

Even when it's really cold and rainy.

The rainy weather is directly to blame for the lack of pictures from this event.

We jumped in the car on Saturday and headed up north. We even got to bring Betsy with us!

We got to our hotel, which was literally right across the street from Disneyland. When we opened up the door to our room, we found BUNK BEDS! How fun is that? Being the birthday boy, I got to choose my bed.

Ryan and I hung out with Grandma and Grandpa that night while the big kids went to California Adventure. We had a birthday cake and everything.

Then, in the morning, the real fun began! We all headed over to the park for breakfast. Now, no one told me that this was a super-special breakfast, so I was a little shocked when I figured out that we got to eat breakfast with lots of special guests!

Check out my face when I saw Captain Hook walk into the room for the first time!

Ryan was having a fabulous time. He really loved seeing all of the characters.

Ry's favorite was Minnie Mouse. She bounced his balloon with him and he was instantly in love. 

I thought Eeyore was pretty cute. I gave him a hug and it made him feel happier.

Ryan was not afraid of Captain Hook. He even touched his hook!

We're not sure if this is Chip or Dale, but he was really cute...

After breakfast, we all headed out into the park to go on rides. First stop:

 

Since we had gotten into the park early, there was no line and we jumped right into our own boat. I sat in the front row with Brett and Kim and was all ready for a fun pirate ride. Then we started moving. And then I panicked. It was dark and we went down a waterfall. Luckily, I had a death grip on Uncle Brett's arm and he kept me safe. After a minute, I relaxed a bit and then it was really, really fun. Pirates shooting at each other and singing...how fun!

We then headed over to the Haunted Mansion, which I had to close my eyes in for a little while, but by the time we got to the hitch-hiking ghost part, I was laughing my head off.

Then we all headed over to the Jungle Cruise. Ryan liked this one, too.

And that's right about the time it started raining and Mom stopped taking pictures.

We went on roller coasters, which I LOVED. (Mom was shocked to hear me laughing and screaming on Thunder Mountain Railroad...she remembers being terrified of this ride.)

I got to meet Woody and Jessie from Toy Story. We will need to get the pictures from Kim and Grandpa Ken...

I rode the Matterhorn and thought the monsters in there were only kinda scary.

Here's a picture of me and Aunt Sarah from "It's a Small World." I really liked this ride a lot!

We ended our day in Toon Town, with a little ride in Mickey Mouse's car, parked right outside of his house.

Sorry...we wish there were more pictures.

Today we're home just hanging out with Betsy. Mom has to get to work on my Monster Truck cake.

Love,
J (the almost-birthday boy!)

Chillin' with Einstein

Some days, I'm just so cute..


Like yesterday, for example. I was just in a good mood all day and I kept making mom smile.


Of course, this always prompts her to take a million pictures to share. Here they are.

We call this first series "Watching Einstein," because, well, I was watching Baby Einstein videos. Have you seen these things? They are AWESOME.

This is how the big boys sit to watch shows.

"I'll just lick that juice off of my chin and I'm all clean."

My buddy Obi is never far away.

This is actually the one that started it all. I'm cute.

 

We're getting ready for two exciting things today. First, a very special visitor will be arriving tonight. We get Betsy for a whole week!

And then, tomorrow, we're headed to Disneyland for Jake's birthday. Pretty exciting!

Love, 

R

P.S. - Uncle Mick, Jake is working hard on his new dance routine. He says he'll be ready for filming next week.

Ok, Ok. Here.

We received the following text last night:

Last Wednesday the world was given a glimpse of a future entertainer performing his "G6." The world was then told to check back the following day for an encore performance. I have seen no such performance. Was this just a publicity thing to raise the rating of "The Holko Boys," ensuring we would keep logging on? Tell the artist he has 24 hours to make good on his promises or the FCC will be notified of this blatant case of false advertising.

Now, we don't need the FCC all up in our business, so we figured we'd better comply. This guy sounded serious.

So, first thing this morning, as evidenced by the Buzz Lightyear pajamas, we set out to record a video of the other favorite song.

G6 is definitely a dancing song. This one, not so much. Jake usually just stands in front of the computer, singing along with the Youtube video (link here). We recorded a dancing video, but we'll warn you that it's not very exciting.

We did, however, figure out what it is Jake likes about this song. He'll tell you at the end of the video.



And where was I during all of this?

Making some calls to those back-up dancers, of course. Gotta keep the talent happy, right?

Have a great day!

Love,
R

Mommy Time

This morning I got in a little extra Mommy time. Jake is still trying to recover from his Saturday night Monster Truck Jam, so he stayed in bed til about 10:00 this morning.

Mommy and I went outside to play since it is a pretty wonderful day here in Southern California. (Sorry, Buffalo.)

I picked some lemons.

I talked some stuff over with Chewy.

And I threw stuff in the pond. This is something that I cannot help. It's part of being a little kid. We see rocks. We see water. We throw rocks in the water. It's just what we do.

We'll post some of Jake's videos from Monster Trucks later. Mom has some editing to do since Dad filmed about 3 hours worth of trucks...

Love,
R

Puppet Show and Pondering by the Pond

On Wednesday, Mom and I really did build a puppet stage! We spent the next few hours taking turns putting on puppet shows.

We have a lot of puppets...

We even had a large audience for our lunchtime performance. (You can't see it here, but both dogs were actually laying there, too. I think Chewy wanted to eat the puppets.)

Then, because yesterday was such a beautiful day, mean Mom wouldn't let me stay in the house and play wii. She made me and Ryan stay outside all afternoon. She said it would be fun. And the weird thin? It was!

We got very muddy. I taught Ryan how to load a dump truck. We threw rocks. A pretty good day. Mom even snapped a few pictures of us.

This one is for all of you who think Ryan is a quiet, sweet little guy. THIS is what his face looks like most of the time. Try to imagine the high-pitched sound a car makes when it needs new brakes...Yeah, that one. That's the sound that usually goes along with this face.

Adorable, isn't he?

Mom likes this one...

Our more serious pose...

I didn't even know Mommy was taking pictures of us when she took this one. We were talking about "brother stuff." Mostly, though, it looks like we are both staring at a rock.

Ryan's new favorite thing to do is give kisses. So, of course, Mom asked us to give each other a kiss. Aunt Becky saw this one and said she hopes we have better aim when we have girlfriends...

(In other news, I wiped my own butt twice yesterday. And I'm not even 4. Glad Mom didn't take pictures of that, huh?)

Have a great weekend!

Love,
J

Jacob's G6

There are two songs I request every day.

Here's one.



You've missed my dancing videos, haven't you?

For those who don't care for this particular musical genre, we'll post my other favorite song tomorrow. Quite a diversion from this one...

Mommy and I are going to put together a puppet stage now so we can do a puppet show for Ryan after his nap!

Love,
J

The Pest

I'm not sure if we've mentioned it here yet or not, but the cat came back. Yes, the cat that used to live here, 4 years ago, before either me or Ryan were around. He's back.

We LOVE him.

Mom is very allergic to him.

Mom loves him.

Mom can't help but pet him and then she sneezes all day.

The cat is supposed to live outside in the garage. He can usually be found there, in the driveway, or rubbing up against every single person who walks by.

Apparently, that wasn't enough for him this morning.

Mom heard us giggling and laughing in our bedrooms and came back to find a little furry intruder.

He was deposited back outside right after this and Mom sneezed the whole way to school.

Lucky that cat is cute!

Love,
J

Tool Box

Yesterday morning, everyone was just relaxing, hanging out in the living room. No one was paying attention to me, really. Then Dad leaned over to Mom and said, "Look at your son."

This is what she saw.

I was quite happy playing in my box.

Here's one of me and my Daddy.

What were we looking at?

A San Diego sunset from Grandma and Grandpa's front deck. It sure is pretty...

I hope you had a good weekend, too!

Love,
R

I Wanna Talk about ME!

So here's the problem:

Jake showed me where Mom keeps the fruit snacks. See that big jar up there on the counter? FULL of fruit snacks.

Now Jake just goes ahead and drags a stool over and tries to help himself. I cannot do this. That whole stool thing is tricky. So instead, I just stand in front of the jar and point and scream until someone gives me what I want. And I WANT FRUIT SNACKS.

The pointing and screaming thing has not been working so well lately.

This morning I tried a new tactic. I blew raspberries at Mom.

Strange, but that didn't seem to work either.

So, I tried giving her my cutest smile. I was SURE that would win her over.

Can you believe she didn't give me any, even after that? Something about I already had two packs of fruit snacks this morning...

Since I knew nothing would work, I just threw myself on the floor and cried.

(Not only did Jake teach me about fruit snacks, he also taught me about being dramatic.)

I earned myself a nap with that last move.

I hope you are having a great day. I'm gonna work on getting myself some fruit snacks. Maybe I can get Jake to help me....

Love,
R

P.S. Happy, happy birthday to our beautiful cousin Carleigh! She is TWO whole years old today. We love and miss you, Carleigh!

Little Boys Playing

Just a normal afternoon in the Holko house. Noisy.

We call this video "Three Minutes in Holkoland."



At least we are all laughing a lot!

Love,
R

Home Again, Home Again

Wearing our Buffalo jerseys and drinking from our Tim Horton's mugs. Somehow, it's not quite the same...

We made it back to San Diego. I was really sad to leave Buffalo and all of our family and friends there. We had such a great time.

I was pretty happy to see Stinky the Garbage Truck when I got home, though. He really missed me while I was gone.

We expect to be back to our (almost) daily posting schedule this week. We'll see how that goes!

Love,
J

Catching Up

It's been a while since our last post. Almost two weeks.

And the weird thing is, no one has sent mom a nasty email. We haven't gotten the complaint calls. I wonder if that has anything to do with the fact that we are here with Gramma Jojo, Aunt Becky, and Uncle Mick...

We've had a fantastic time so far. Of course there were lots of presents when we got here and we got to have Christmas all over again. Obviously we were VERY good boys this year, because we got so many nice things.

And as cool as all of those presents are, the best part of being here is all of the fun we're having playing with everyone.

Gramma Jojo is a fantastic snuggler, baby rocker, and bath giver (among many other talents).

Ryan and his girlfriend Molly enjoyed some Jojo time together.

Daddy has been having a good time, too. He sure does like shooting guns. Luckily, so does Uncle Brian and his friend Jay.

Oh Dad.

I got to shoot a BB gun. Mom said it was ok, so Dad helped me do it. I'm pretty sure I killed that clay bird.

Ryan has been busy making new friends. Here he is with Grampa Dave, who isn't really our Grampa. He IS Carleigh's Grampa, though...we figure that sorta counts.

We've played some pretty fun new games. Here I am Big Buck hunting. Check out my hair!

At-ti-tude.

Ryan liked my hair so much....

 

Grampa Mike has us figured out. He goes to work in the morning and comes home with some coffee for mom and some donuts for us. This is living!

Oh, yeah. It's cold here. We have to get all dressed up to go outside and play, but it is so much fun. And Ryan looks so stinkin' cute in his winter coat! Mom took some videos of him walking around in his gear. We'll post later...it's hilarious!

On our agenda for today? Snowman building.

More pictures to come...

Love,
J