The Sunday 7

Forgive my tardiness. We spent the weekend in the wilderness and I didn't bring my computer with me. So without further ado . . .

1. We had our last cousins' day on Tuesday. Except Ruby and Casper couldn't come, so it was kind of a bust. Also, we went to to Schwallier's on their second day open for the season and almost nothing was available so that was a fail too. The kids played on the playground, petted some goats, ate some donuts, then we went back to Niki's for a pool day and pizza. Not a bad way to spend the day - even if we missed 2/9 of the cousins. (#math)

2. The rest of the week is a blur of back pain and camping preparation. Every year, I feel like it takes me a week to pack for 3 days of camping, then another week to unpack and do all the laundry. This year, I determined to scale back. I did ok, but the reality is that if you don't have a fully stocked camper at the ready, it logistically takes a lot of preparation to camp. We stay in a cabin, but I still have to pack bedding for 5 people, food for 5 people, toiletries and utensils and beach towels and basic cooking instruments for 5 people. It's a lot of work for something I'm not crazy about to begin with. But the kids look forward to it with undying affection, and they enjoy it enough to make it worth it. (Although sometimes their attitudes bely their enjoyment and make me wonder why we even bother.) The weather was mostly nice all weekend - pop up showers here and there, but nothing that trapped us in the cabin for long periods or ruined our fun. I remembered the melatonin this year so we all slept well. And some other families from school were there too, so the kids had friends to play with! It was one of the first years that I felt like they didn't require constant supervision and I was able to read and relax a lot!

Living his best life

Fireside shenanigans

Grandpa always buys ice cream

Rainy morning playing cards

Victory in the inflatable obstacle course

Second place and still smiling

Daddy's hat

Hot dogs roasting on an open fire . . .

Hammock city! (Not ours. Friends let us play with them.)

3 generations of VanderKodde men eating ice cream cones and watching a movie

"You're getting verrrry sleeeepy."

Racing pop cans in the pool with Grandpa

3. Of course, the above pictures are the highlight reel. Don't get me wrong. I don't hate camping entirely, and it's definitely getting easier the older the kids get. But I didn't take pictures of Lena crying for half an hour at the pool because she was cold and then crying for an hour later at the campsite because she was hot. I didn't record Lucy rolling her eyes and huffing and asking me to leave the room because she didn't want me around. I didn't enshrine the moments that Levi was literally draped across my lap wailing, "What can I dooooo?? I'm so bored! Why didn't you bring me more toys to play with?" Those pictures don't show me hobbling from the pool to the cabin carrying wet towels and water bottles and sucking air in through my teeth because my back is spasming with every step I take. Or the guilt I felt for yelling at my kids when we're supposed to be having this fun, family experience. Or the shame I felt at letting my in-laws see my kids' atrocious eating habits up close and personal for three days instead of one hour during Sunday dinner. Camping will never be my vacation of choice, but I'm thankful that the good tends to outweigh the bad and I'm hopeful that my kids will look back on these weekends with fondness and not with memories of me yelling at them. Good news. We get to do it all again in two weeks for Labor Day! 😂

4. I was able to read 2.5 books in the three days we were gone. I read Book Lovers by Emily Henry on Friday (cute, but not wholesome) and Run, Rose, Run on Saturday/Sunday. I randomly picked it up at the library because it was co-authored by James Patterson and Dolly Parton, which seemed like an intriguing pairing. It was about a country star with a troubled past (is there any other kind?), and it turns out that Dolly just wrote the song lyrics that are liberally peppered throughout the story, so she didn't contribute a ton to the writing, but it was an enjoyable read. And apparently Dolly released an album of the songs in the novel, so I'll be looking that up soon. Both of those books were physical copies from the library, however, so I couldn't read them after dark. (All the rooms inside the cabin were filled with sleeping people, so there was nowhere with light for me to read.) So after dark I listened to an audiobook until I fell asleep. And then I listened to it again the whole way home today . . . and then again for a few hours after unpacking tonight . . . and I'm still only halfway through it! I'm not sure if it's an unusually long book, or if it just takes so long because it's on audio. I've tried to find the ebook version on the library/hoopla/kindle unlimited, but haven't had any luck, so I'll just have to keep listening to reach the conclusion. It's called Of Fire and Lions by Mesu Andrews, and is a fictional depiction of the life of Daniel from the Bible. I love Biblical fiction because it makes the setting of the Bible so much more real to me. It's so easy to read the same passages of the Bible year after year, over and over, and let them become trite representations of actual events. I love having the Biblical Daniel I feel so familiar with thanks to 30some years of Christian education become more real to me as I begin to grasp the depravity of the Babylonians, the heartbreak of exile, and the danger of forgetting the true God over an entire generation of living in a foreign land. I wish I could find a printed copy of the book so I can zip through it at my usual frenetic reading pace!

5. Reading that book reminds me of another book I read recently that has really stuck with me. At the Gospel Coalition conference I went to in June, they were handing out free books by one of the speakers at the event called The Secular Creed. It's a short book that tackles some of our culture's most dominating "creeds" and a Biblical counterargument to them. The one that stood out to me was about feminism and how third wave feminism calls the God of the Bible patriarchal and oppressive, when in actuality, his treatment of women is the exact opposite. What women today see as oppression was meant as protection - and of course it goes without saying that men throughout the ages have abused that privilege (but I'll say it anyway so I'll get fewer angry comments) - but when you begin to understand how abominably women were used and abused in ancient times, you see the benevolence of a loving God by what he requires of his people. I'm going to share a long quote that is a bit crude in its honesty, but it was mind-blowing to me:

In Greco-Roman thinking, men were superior to women and sex was a way to prove it. . . . In Rome, "men no more hesitated to use slaves and prostitutes to relieve themselves of their sexual needs than they did to use the side of a road as a toilet." [quoting Tom Holland's book Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World] The idea that every woman had the right to choose what happened to her body would've been laughable. Christianity threw out this model. Rather than being seen as inferior to men, women were equally made in God's image. Rather than being free to use slaves and prostitutes (of either sex), men were expected to be faithful to one wife, or to live in celibate singleness . . . The Christian husband was to love his wife as Christ loved the church (Eph. 5:25). The relative weakness of her body was not a license for domination, but a reason to show her honor as a fellow heir of the grace of life (1 Pet. 3:7). While Roman families often married off their pre-pubescent daughters, Christian women could marry later . . . No wonder Christianity was so attractive to women. Jesus had changed everything." (66)

6. That was quite the tangent . . . Anyway! In case you're dying to know about my back pain, I'm happy to report that despite some ups and downs camping this weekend, it's feeling better today than it has in weeks. 🤞 I told Justin on Saturday that I'm just going to bite the bullet and put the chiropractor bill on the credit card because I can't function like this, but now I'm feeling hopeful that our credit won't suffer for my pain and I can power through and save that money until the next time my body decides to rebel. I can't imagine why it doesn't appreciate all I do for it - all those carbs and sugar and nights bingeing on the couch. Psh. Ingrate.

7. On to pictures and memes!

Last Sunday we were invited to Justin's cousin's house for a pool party. His cousins bought Grandma's house, so Justin grew up in this backyard. This year, Lena and Levi took a real interest in the shuffleboard court Grandpa installed many years ago.