HOLIDAZE ROCK

it's that season again... time to start checking out black friday deals, scouring the internet, flipping through the Toys R' Us catalog.

Time to get the little dudes some Christmas presents that will not only knock their socks off, but keep them stoked and hopefully anywhere except in front of the TV!

My littlest dude has taken a liking to banging on my guitars. He likes 'em all.. from the $50 swap meet guitar, to my sweet Epiphone semi-hollowbody that I used to play every day with the band. Shoot, he'll even turn a shovel into a guitar!  I let him use them (& to a certain point, abuse them) because I'm hoping that playing music will be a welcome, comforting idea, rather than a "don't touch dad's stuff!" kinda thing. His favorite guitars have been the 2 ukuleles we have hanging around the house. Obviously, they're small, easy to carry around, easy to play, and actually sound awesome when they're in tune and have a 2-year old bangin' on them.  While he still digs jammin on those, I was starting to do some research on what could be the next step for a rising 2-year old musician.  Out of nowhere, my Mom sent me an email to check out a guitar she found while combing the web...  the LOOG guitar!  It's 3-stringed guitar that was the result of an NYU thesis, turned successful kickstarter project.  The guitar comes un-assembled, so you've got a fun project that helps you and your little one understand how the guitar works. The tuning is based on the 3 high strings on a traditional guitar (G-B-E), so there could be some possible cross-over into 6-string. There are a few different body options, and it looks like they just finished another successful kickstarter campaign to get an electric Loog going. Radical!

Anyhow, I'm stoked to grab one of these for Charley! Maybe we'll put out a 7 inch for the New Year! Thanks for the tip Mom!

check out the video here:

also, check 'em out on Instagram here!

WEEKENDZ TO THE MAX

we've been gettin a lot out of our weekends lately. between baseball games, birthday parties, and hangin out, we've had some good ones. here are a few recent highlights:
on our last weekend, we made a trip down to Zoomars Petting Zoo in San Juan Capistrano. It's a great little petting zoo with a hands on rabbit & guinea pig area, horse rides, a small train, some very hungry goats, and more! You can purchase a box of animal food (carrots & lettuce) for a couple of bucks when you enter, and that'll let you feed all the animals there. The carrots seem to be the most popular with the animals, but this guinea pig pictured here with the dudes seemed to really dig the lettuce. If you make it down to Zoomars, make sure to take a walk around the Los Rios district (which is where Zoomars is located). There are some VERY cool historic houses, a great park, and some amazing photo ops for the fam. 

This weekend, we made another trip down to Lowe's for some garage organizing projects, and we picked up another monster truck kit for Coop. Although this wasn't one of their official "Build & Grow" events, we were stoked to grab another monster truck to add to our collection. We had a hard time choosing between the truck and a good lookin' monster truck, but we decided the monster trucks would be able to race each other, total bonus! Cooper seems to be getting the hang of this hammering stuff, literally. He did most of the nails all by himself, until he had trouble with one of the wheels.. then I had trouble with it too, so we ended up using wood glue to get the thing on! We call it being resourceful!

 Charley and I ended the weekend up with a little jam session. He likes to pound on my guitars, one by one. I'd like him to grow up knowing the guitars are fun things to play, rather than me keeping them safe and out of reach from him. I definitely make sure he's not jumping on 'em, but some enthusiastic strumming is always good. We like to plug the electric guitars in with some fun fuzz distortion and weird delay effects, and make weird sounds. 

Good times!