Shwanda Family Christmas 2010

I know I’m kind of doing this backwards, talking about Christmas after I already wished you a Happy New Year, but I wanted to share with you the Shwanda version of the Hallmark family Christmas. This story has “after school” special written all over it.

This past year Paul and I adopted a new holiday tradition by giving our kids money to buy each other presents so that they could experience the true joy of giving, but mostly so that we would not have to do it. It turned out to be a great idea and a huge success. The kids  gave a lot of thought to what they got each other and learned how to shop wisely and to budget their money. Read the rest of this entry »

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that Paul, the kids and I were all heading downtown to the Catalyst to see our rock star tenant, Johnny Prynce’s band Dirty Penny. My friend Kathryn’s twin sons’ band, Rapid Fire was the opening act. This is a video from that night. Even through my ear plugs I thought they were great. Become a fan  on Facebook.

Johnny Prynce, our rock star tenant, has been traveling on tour all month and is breezin’ back into town today for a concert in downtown Santa Cruz at the Catalyst. Woo hoo!! We’re all going. The opening act is a band called Radid Fire whom I have mentioned before. Rapid Fire consists of three teenage boys around 13 years old, two of whom are the twin sons of my friend Kathryn, who is a frequent commenter here. I just talked to Kathryn and we plan to meet up and agreed to wear our ear plugs and to keep our phones on vibrate. The video above is of Johnny’s band, Dirty Penny singing “Vendetta”. Enjoy.