alternate style on sub-nav li items in sidebar

Hi People – hoping somebody can help me with this.

I am trying to add an alternating style on my sidebar sub-nav list items – I have almost got it working – my problem is the $ children is generating it’s own
li tags and styles – so I get n li element embedded in an li element – make sense?

Here is the markup:

<ul class="sidebar_list">
		                     <li class="sidepanelbox">

              <div class="header">
				<h3>SUB-NAVIGATION</h3>
			</div>
             <div class="content">
			<ul class="sub-nav">
                                     <li class="uneven"><li class="page_item page-item-67"><a href="#" title="The team">The team</a></li>
</li>
            <li class="last">&nbsp;</li>

			</ul>
            	</div>
            <div class="clr"></div>
            </li>
</ul>

Here is my code:

<div id="content-left">
	<ul class="sidebar_list">
		<?php if (!function_exists('dynamic_sidebar') || !dynamic_sidebar(1)) : ?>
        <?php
			if($post->post_parent)
			$children = wp_list_pages("title_li=&child_of=".$post->post_parent."&echo=0"); else
			$children = wp_list_pages("title_li=&child_of=".$post->ID."&echo=0");
			if ($children) { 

			?>
             <li class="sidepanelbox">
              <div class="header">
				<h3>SUB-NAVIGATION</h3>
			</div>
             <div class="content">
			<ul class="sub-nav">
            <?php $i = 0; ?>
            <?php $i++; ?>
             <li <?php if($i&1) { echo 'class="uneven"';} else {echo 'class="even"';} ?>><?php echo $children; ?></li>
            <li class="last">&nbsp;</li>
			</ul>
            	</div>
            <div class="clr"></div>
            </li>
			<?php } ?>

		<?php endif; ?>
	</ul>
</div>
</div>

Any help would GREATLY appreciated – and it might also help someone else trying to do similar things.

Cheers,
Simon