The best of Van Halen...but its not Van Halen

You have all probably used this site in years past and I became aware of it last year, but check out pandora.com

This site is fabulous. Basically what you do is you create an account, pick out your favorite band and then Pandora will find other bands that are similar in styles and music to your favorite band and you get your own radio station. So, for Brodi and I, we have our favorite bands like Muse, Everclear, Live, Linkin Park, etc...each one of those bands now has its own separate station where only music that is similar to those styles is played. It is free and it is streamed for FREE right over the internet.

So, if you want to listen to music on your computer but you want to find new or different bands, just enter what style of music you like and sit back and enjoy. There is the feature built in as well that if you don't like a certain song, you can give it a thumbs up and you will not have to listen to that music anymore.

Now, I know some of you love your 'Bangles', 'Backstreet Boys', 'Barry Manilow', etc. and that is OK--now you can listen to a lot of crappy bands that sound just like them! Anyway, enjoy...

Champions of the World (or at least a part of the World)!

This past Saturday, I witnessed a fabulous sporting event...the finals of the '7 Buck Fun' tennis tournament for the 20 and over Women's Doubles.

Brodi and her partner, Alissa, fought their way thru the tournament with a courageous BYE win in the semis to set up a finals match with two 20-year-old women who were eager to show these moms how to win a tourney. Brodi and Alissa would have none of that. Battling a sizzling hot day and a tournament director who proclaimed early in the match 'That match over there should be over in about 20 minutes', the Bro and Liss team would not give up. Strong groundstrokes by Alissa made it difficult for the other team to attack...and Brodi's net game kept the other team on their heels. The other team had no options in battling against this skilled doubles juggernaut.



Down 5-4 in games in the third set with Brodi serving, they even faced 4 straight match points. That is right...any little mistake and the match was over but they gritted their teeth, yelled at the opposing team to try and finish them off if they could and smacked the ball around...saving match point after match point. Not only did they win that game, they ended up winning it all taking it 3-6, 6-3, 7-5 and reigning supreme in the tennis world for at least one day. Well done ladies, well done!

A new way to handle your business...

I care about the environment. When we bought our current house, it had the old school toilets. If I remember right, one of toilets was a nice peach colored one (you can never go wrong with a peach colored toilet) and I believe it even had the wood seat (Classy!). You would flush the toilet and the water would swirl around for 2-3 minutes and slowly disappear and 9 gallons of water later, it took care of your business.

So we upgraded to fabulous toilets. DO NOT GET ME STARTED on toilet talk. I could go on for hours and I apologize to all of you that have had to listen to me talk about it. Anyway, we replaced 3 of the 4 toilets in our house with the water conservation toilets and they work great.

But, I found a new toilet. It uses even loss water and takes care of your waste. The EcoJohn. How does it work? It BURNS up your waste. That is correct. It basically incinerates your waste. Gone. As you can see by the picture, it actually has a chimney. Who hasn't wanted a toilet with a chimney attached? It needs the things a typical toilet would need--a chimney, a power source and a propane tank. Typical, huh?

So, after burning up your waste, what do you end up with? After a few months, you need to take out the cup full of ash out of your toilet. Yes, ash. Yes, about a cup full of it. They recommend that you can then spread it in your garden as a 'fertilizer.' Anyway, I will let one of you buy it first and try it out...and if you do, I am sooooo coming over to your house. http://www.ecojohn.com/index.html

You asked for it, you got it!

So, we have a new member of our family. He is hairless, sleek and ready to party! Welcome to our new crazy little neutered boycat, Smokey. Carter happily accepted the job of picking out a name for him: 'Sprinky', 'aaaaah' and a few other names were thrown about, but Smokey was the winner.

He likes hanging out on the couch, preferably on Brodi's lap while she pets him. He loves to play with tennis balls and ribbons. He also enjoys climbing under Carter's blankets and sleeping.

After receiving insult and after insult from friends and family (he looks like a demon! That is the creepiest thing that I have ever seen! Is that a rat?), he has joined our house and is ready to prove the local neighborhood that he may be the most adorable thing ever.

And fwiw, though many people who have cat allergies are able to have no allergic problems with these kids, some do (including us...we are hoping that the allergies stay low and don't cause us too many problems. We'll see).

Coolest Pet Ever

So I am looking for a pet. I love birds. I had a parrot growing up and loved it, but it had a bad habit of trying to bite my fingers off. Most parrots are not this way. This one was. Brodi is not too keen on the idea though of getting a bird.

I grew up with dogs. Brodi had a dog. But, dogs take a lot of work, picking up lots of poop, etc...so for now, we will pass.

But I have now found the perfect pet. A cat. A cat, you say? Yes, a Sphynx cat. How cool looking are these cats? Don't get me wrong, I am not a cat guy. But this is a cat that I would like having around. It would just sit by our front door and scare people away. So huggable, so cute, so intimidating. Now, if I can just convince Brodi on it, we are in business. Feel free to let Brodi know how awesome this cat would be for our house.

Couple of pics from the recent

The last post was on pictures that were a couple of years old...Both of them probably need a haircut but as you can see, Carter still has the long flowing locks and Beckham has the wispy, slightly curling hair.

Couple of pics from the past

I am a bit slow in updating the blog this week...but here are a couple of pics of the boys.

These pictures are both about 2 years old but you can see a bit of their personalities. Carter (he was 3.5 years old in this picture) is the active, loud and energetic one. Beckham (he was only about 6 months old in this pic) is the thinker and playful one. Both are hilarious and both are a lot of trouble.