TeamSwanee Blog

Volleyball Tournaments

Brad Schvaneveldt — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 17:49:21 +0000

As indoor volleyball is starting to come to an end this season, I figured I’d write a little bit about the tournaments we played in. We’ll usually play in one in November and December, which was okay. The one in November at the U of U, we played like crap. Usually we will have already been playing in a men’s league for a couple months by this point, but there were no leagues this year, so we were out of sync. In December we played at UVU and played awesome, at first. We went undefeated in pool play, which was not an easy task considering the teams in our pool. However, one of our guys got injured and it was downhill from there.

With the awesome play we had pre injury, we had high hopes for the next one at the U of U on February 3. However, we came out and played terrible once again. Most of us hadn’t even touched a volleyball in a month and a half since the last one, so we were once again out of sync. We still managed to take 2nd in our pool, but something changed once we got into the playoffs. We were playing awesome, and went undefeated through the rest of the tournament to take 1st place for the first time.

A few weeks later we had the last tournament of the year at UVU. The tournaments down there tend to be the biggest and most competitive, having twice as many teams playing as the one at the U. We were put in the A pool for the first time (which has the top 4 teams), so we were unsure how well we would do. We played decent, but managed to lose to all 3 teams. We didn’t have the awesome day 2 like we did at the U. We won our first couple matches, including a really tough one against SUU which allowed us to get into the semis. But we lost our next couple matches and ended up taking 4th. We were happy about that since our best finish at UVU up to that point was 7th place.

Swimming

Brad Schvaneveldt — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 17:48:15 +0000

Brody loves to go swimming, so we went to the indoor pool at the Murray Rec Center. Brody enjoyed himself this time more than ever. We went down the big slide 7-8 times and he wanted to keep going. We also played in the lazy river and on the jungle gym area. Josie really liked being in the water too. She was all smiles as usual, and she enjoyed splashing the water. Brody was pretty upset when it was time to go, he wanted to keep playing. We’re thinking that we are going to put him in swimming lessons this year. He just loves the water, so we figured we get a jump on that.

Snowmobiling with the Scotts

Brad Schvaneveldt — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 17:47:02 +0000

The Scotts invited us up to their cabin up Weber Canyon (just past Oakley), for some snowmobiling and hanging out. It was so much fun. I had never ridden a snowmobile before, and once we got there, we loaded up our stuff on the sled and rode in to the cabin, dropped off our stuff, and headed out for some riding. Brody was in heaven riding on that thing. We strapped Josie up to Danielle and were all able to fit on it. We cruised around the pathways up to a big open area (which is actually a frozen over lake). We rode back and forth there for a while, and then headed back to the cabin. We hung out for a bit, and then Nick, Brody and I went out for another ride. Brody got tired after a while so we headed back again. Before we went into the cabin, we decided to go for one quick ride down the hill on the sled. Back in the cabin, we had hamburgers for dinner and the kids watched Finding Nemo. Then we packed up and headed home. Good times!

Bounce House

Brad Schvaneveldt — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 17:45:38 +0000

I thought it would be fun to take Brody to a bounce house, so after looking forever online to find where one was at, we went to Jump N Bounce in West Jordan. Brody is always climbing over everything at home, so he was in heaven. We met up with the McKee’s hoping that Brody and Boston would run around together. They did a little bit, but Brody was all over the place, it was hard for me to keep up with him. We probably lost him 4-5 times, because he would get off one slide and not wait for me, and disappear in the crowds of kids that were there. Not to worry, we found him each time We will definitely be going there again.

Nursing School Graduate

Brad Schvaneveldt — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 21:53:08 +0000

I probably should’ve had Danielle write this one, since it is such a big deal for her, but I wanted to spend some time and brag about my wife a little. Danielle graduated from nursing school after 2 long years of stress, long hours of studying, tears, frustration, more studying, test after test, more tears, and juggling how the kids were going to be taken care of. Not to mention all the school she had to take before getting into the nursing program (that dang Math 1050 nearly killed us, and I say “us” because it was a group effort). It has finally come to an end, and we are both so excited that it is over! All that is left now is to take the boards which will be sometime in January. Anyhow, I just wanted to say how proud I am of my amazing wife, congratulations!

Thanksgiving 2011

Brad Schvaneveldt — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 21:50:18 +0000

Thanksgiving time was nice and relaxing. I took a couple extra days off so I had a 6 day weekend. Thanksgiving Day was pretty busy, we went over to my parent’s house in the morning and spent some time there, and had dinner #1. About 2 pm, we headed over to Danielle’s family and had dinner #2. Danielle’s sisters Amity and Ann (and her family), were in town, so it was nice to spend some time with them. We ate too much and lounged on the couch when we weren’t chasing Brody around making sure he wasn’t breaking something. The rest of the weekend was spent avoiding having to do anything with Black Friday, I’d rather spend more money that deal with crowds of crazy people. I saw this video of people going crazy over a pallet of waffle irons because they were $2. Pushing and shoving, grabbing 5-8 at a time. Nothing says Merry Christmas, and “I care so much about you”, than a $2 present from Wal-Mart.

We also were able to get together for our annual friends Thanksgiving party. Usually we have dinner at someone’s house, but we procrastinated planning anything, so we ended up meeting up for dinner at Chuck A Rama. I usually don’t like buffets, but was really surprised how good the food was there. Brody was all over the place as usual, so it made it hard to enjoy the night, but it was good to see everyone again. We don’t get together nearly enough.

Halloween 2011

Brad Schvaneveldt — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 21:47:46 +0000

Boy am I behind on blogs once again. Well, way back in October, we celebrated a little holiday called Halloween. Last year was a little rough because Brody was really sick, so this year was quite a bit better. We did our annual Halloween party with Danielle’s family which was as fun as ever. Brody dressed up as Spiderman, and Josie was a little bat. The kids had a few activities and we roasted hot dogs, ate homemade doughnuts, and watched our Halloween movie that we made a couple years ago. Hopefully we can find some time to do that again!

A few days before Halloween, we carved some pumpkins. Brody was all for it, and wanted to help cut the pumpkins and made a mess with all the pumpkin guts. I thought they turned out pretty good.

On Halloween night, we took the kids out trick or treating through the neighborhood. We weren’t going to go for very long originally, but Brody loved it, so we went all over the place. By the end, Brody was having trouble carrying his heavy bucket full of candy. Josie was content just sitting all snuggled up in the stroller. It was a good night!

For more pictures, check out the gallery: Halloween 2011

Josie: 4 Months

Brad Schvaneveldt — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 15:59:01 +0000

It seems like every year around this time, we have the hardest time staying up on posting things on our blog. Maybe it’s because Danielle is back in nursing school, and suddenly we are too busy. Anyhow, we took the cutest pictures of Josie for her 4 month pictures that I just had to post them. She is growing so fast, yet she is still so little. At her last checkup she was in the 50% range for both weight and height. She smiles all the time, and has started doing the baby talk quite a bit now. I think she likes to hear herself, so once she gets started, she’ll talk forever. She has been sleeping through the night for quite a while now, Danielle really appreciates that. Every once in a while she’ll wake up in the middle of the night, but that’s not too often anymore. She has been better at grabbing things. It started by her grabbing her own hands and then sticking them into her mouth, but now she’ll grab at her toys in her car seat, or anything else you put in front of her. We sure love our baby Josie.

For more pictures, check out the gallery: Josie: 4 Months

Yuba Lake 2011

Brad Schvaneveldt — Sun, 07 Aug 2011 21:29:17 +0000

Last year we went to Yuba Lake with some of Danielle’s family, so this year we wanted to continue the tradition and were able to get even more of the family to come. We also invited my sister and her family, my mom, and Megan & Tyler and their family. Yuba was even more windy than it usually is, which pretty much made us put the wakeboard away, but we still had some good times on the tube. This year we decided to camp in the “boat in” camp area, which was really nice. The other beaches get crowded with all the trailers and motor homes, so we were able to get away from all of that. It’s a little more effort to boat in all the people with all their stuff, but we made it work. Good times!

For more pictures, check out the gallery: Yuba Lake 2011

Brody’s Bike

Brad Schvaneveldt — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 17:01:34 +0000

So the other day I went over to my brother’s house to pick something up. We went out in his garage to get it, when he starts looking through this big pile of stuff that he has (bikes and toys and such). He says, “you want this?” and points to Tristan’s old bike. I had thought about getting Brody a little bike, but thought he was too small for one. Anyhow, Brody loves the bike! He can’t quite get the pedaling down, but he fits on it and loves to sit on it while we push him around. Thanks Todd!