The Saturday 7

Well, well, well. I have a lot to catch up on.

1. We survived another year of labor day camping. It really does get easier and more enjoyable as the kids get older. The weather was perfect, I read a couple good books, and no one got eaten by a bear. #success

Turtle race winners

The prize is candy cigarettes. Haha

Lucy has gotten really into playing cards, lately. She plays euchre with her friends at school, and finally got the hang of Wizard - the game Justin's family plays. She won three games over the course of our four day camping trip!

I love this picture, because there's a joke in our family about how VanderKodde men love plain vanilla ice cream. A whole bunch of us ordered ice cream that night - none of these three boys heard what the other ordered, but they each ordered the exact same thing. 3 generations of plain vanilla lovers.

This is the progression of trying to get a cute picture with Lena in it

Nailed it!

Speaking of cuties

Hammock life

Beach sunset

No plain vanilla for me!

More on this book later . . .

2. We booked it home on Monday because Niki was hosting Family Olympics! We got split into teams . . .

Then we participated in series of games of skill, strength, speed, and pure luck. I didn't take a lot of pictures because I was busy attempting athletic feats, but here's one of the games:

Trying to catch a cup full of water

You can see how well I did on that one . . .

My team ended up getting first place! Not because of our athletic prowess by any means, but because we all drew high point values in the game of luck. Lol. It was such a hilarious and fun day. Niki planned a ton of games, bought prizes, and even provided us all with medals. I hope this will be an annual event!

3. Book report: while we were camping, I re-read an old favorite: Gentleman Jim (by Mimi Matthews), and one of its sequels that I hadn't read before - The Governess and the Rogue. I also finished a book that I'd been reading for a couple of weeks: A Short History of the Jewish People by Raymond P. Scheindlin. I have so many questions about Jewish history beyond what's recorded in the Bible, so I was thrilled to discover this book at the free bookstore a couple weeks ago. The book was at times fascinating, horrifying, and boring. Haha. I zipped through the first three quarters, but the last quarter dragged. I was shocked to read how widespread the diaspora was. I didn't realize how far and wide Jews ended up after the destruction of the temple in 70 AD. Actually, I was also surprised to realize that a large community of Jews never returned from the Babylonian exile. Instead, they held onto their Jewish identity and some of their customs and traditions, but mostly assimilated. In fact, that was the story of Jews all over the world - apparently there were huge Jewish communities in Spain and Poland at times. The other thing that shocked me was how widespread the hatred for Jewish people has always been - with very little cause. I can't wrap my mind around it. People hated the Jews because of their unusual religious practices - but don't a lot of religions have strange practices? They hated them because they were poor, rich, rural, urban, etc., etc. For thousands of years in locations all over the world, Jewish people were severely discriminated against - they couldn't own property, they were forbidden from attending public universities, they weren't allowed to hold government jobs. In multiple locations over multiple years, Jews were forced into "ghettos" and weren't allowed to live anywhere else. If nothing else, this book made me grateful to be an American. The Jews who emigrated to America were shocked by the freedoms they had. I also couldn't help but think that for centuries, this people that God chose as his own have been grasping for the very thing he promised Abraham: land and people. This is going to sound arrogant, but I doubt many people are still reading this paragraph . . . When the Jews denied Jesus as the Messiah, they received the consequences for disobedience that God promised all throughout the Pentateuch. The chapter on Israel's recent history (at least semi-recent, the book was written in the late 90s) was a jumble of battles and places and politics that I didn't fully understand. But the fact that Israel is once again a nation with land is certainly indicative that we're one step closer to the end times. So interesting. Still so many questions.

4. The other thing that has stayed with me since reading that book is how good we have it as 21st century Americans. For almost all of human history, life has been struggle. Across ages and cultures and religions, people have experienced unthinkable hardship. Generations of Jews lived through unbearable circumstances - even before the holocaust. They were beaten, starved, separated, and abused in every manner possible. And while the Jews seem to have been recipients of an unnatural amount of hate, they didn't have a monopoly on hardship. I can't even think about the horrors women in the Middle East have (and continue to) face, or the inhabitants of African nations beset by guerilla warfare, or Russians and Chinese subjected to communism, Southeast Asian nations torn apart by civil war and sex trafficking. Not to mention the Atlantic slave trade or Spanish conquistadors . . . history is full of horrors beyond imagination. And yet, today's social media feeds are full of wealthy Americans whining about growing up in the "worst timeline." We don't have health insurance. We can't get abortions up to birth everywhere we want. The bad orange man in the oval office says mean things that hurt my feelings. Food stamps won't let me buy pop. Streaming services are expensive. 40 hour work weeks are hard. Someone called me by the wrong pronoun. What is wrong with us?!?! Oy. Perspective.

5. It's with that perspective in mind that I've been struggling through a recent bout of debilitating back pain. I looked back at some old blog entries, and I seem to succumb to this particular ailment every couple of years - quite often at this time of year, in fact. I think it started with camping. I overdid it packing everything up on Friday, walked more than usual around the campground all weekend, and slept in an uncomfortable bed for three nights. So my core was already weakened, and then on Wednesday, I made the mistake of setting my purse down on the floor at work and felt that ill-fated "slip and seize." Something slips in my lower back and then everything seizes up immediately. It took my breath away and got worse as the day went on. I called in sick on Thursday because I knew that I had to run Grandparents' Day on Friday, and I needed to give my back a day to rest. It was bearable by Friday morning, but after 4 hours on my feet at Grandparents' Day, I was in agony. Every muscle in my lower back was screaming at me. It wrapped around my hips and my lower abdomen, up to my ribs. And all of my tensing and using different muscles to compensate for that pain has led to pain in my shoulders, neck, and head. I've been alternating ice and heat, popping ibuprofen like candy, and resting almost every minute. But as soon as I stand up, it's back with a vengeance - to the point that I'm constantly nauseous and have to force myself to eat. I made Lena come to Meijer with me today so she could do the lifting and moving of items in and out of the cart while I just hunched over it like the geriatric 40 year old I am. It is absolutely miserable . . . and I keep thinking, "What would I do if I felt like this in a concentration camp?" Or we watched some 9/11 documentaries yesterday and I thought, "Can you imagine running down flights of burning stairs right now?" Seriously, I hate the pain, but it's so so trivial. (So trivial, in fact, that I just spent 15+ sentences explaining how bad it is. 🤦)

6. The other day I was trying to look up something in one of my old blog entries, so I typed "thevanderkoddes.blogspot" into Google and AI made a helpful summary of my blog.

Not gonna lie. That kind of creeps me out. 😬

7. Pics and memes:

Things I find in my camera roll

Baby Bella!

A couple camping pics I stole from other people

Readers' corner

AC season at school

I've been trying to diet again. You'll notice this theme come up a couple times in today's memes.

Not funny, but thought-provoking

Justin jokingly asked me if I want a big SUV because that's what all the cool moms drive. I turned to him and said, "Have you really not learned yet that I'm not a cool mom?"

Typical!