The 4th on Voetberg Hill
Green Gables 🤝🏻 The Hunger Games
Yesterday marked the annual Voetberg 4th of July—an event that, in photos, looks like something out of Anne of Green Gables, all pastoral charm and handmade pie. In reality? It’s more like The Hunger Games.
We may appear classy as we compete in what we’ve dubbed the 4th of July Olympics. But don’t be fooled. Those who show up are there to win. We fight like our lives—or at the very least, our national pride—depend on it.
The Games officially kicked off the evening of the 3rd. My team: me, my brothers Rudy and Deter, and Deter’s wife, Kennedy. We called ourselves the Buttercups. We were there for one reason: victory.
After Whitney Houston led the national anthem (via 1991 Super Bowl recording, naturally), we headed to the volleyball courts, where the Buttercups came out strong in the first round, winning the early bracket with ease. But in the championship round, we were matched against our cousins Jacoby and Zander—whose Burj Khalifa-level height simply cannot be matched. They were too tall. Too athletic. We put up a fight, but in the end, we had to admit the truth: they were the better team. We got third.
Next came the shooting biathlon, which is where things start to get CIA. The athlete sprints through a course and then is tasked with shooting a target (we ❤️ the Second Amendment) from about 10 meters away. Deter represented the Buttercups in this event and—despite being both a cop, an outstanding runner, and Jason Bourne fan boy—he landed in fifth place. This was not what the team asked for nor expected.
But it would’ve been wrong to single out Deter for his performance because Kennedy and I played pickleball so poorly, we could’ve made a middle school JV team blush. It was bad. We think we ended up in 8th place...ish. (There was a lot of drama surrounding the pickleball scoring. Emotions ran high. Brackets were disputed.)
Thankfully, Rudy came through in the backyard golf tournament, placing third and keeping the Buttercups afloat in the overall standings.
The Games concluded with a 4x300-meter-ish relay. Each member of our team ran their leg with Sydney McLaughlin-level precision. The Buttercups took home gold in the event, and let me tell you—it felt so freaking good to win the final event. Truly climactic. Was it enough to secure the overall victory? No. But we did walk away with team bronze—which, according to Joanna Gaines, is way more in than gold anyway.
Because we clearly hadn’t gotten enough physical activity on the 3rd, we kicked off the 4th with a 1.6-mile race on newly cleared trails through the woods. Brutal. The hills were hilling.
The afternoon was reserved for the kids’ games, which featured yet another relay race (the fam loves a good run), a catch-the-chicken game (no animals were harmed), round-robin pickleball, and a tug-of-war that resulted in a lot of tears.
We then ate a lot of delicious food. My sister Brice made a Korean-style cucumber salad that didn’t exactly scream America, but delivered the refreshing (and spicy!) flavor my body not only wanted but definitely needed. Liddy brought her classic quinoa salad. Lilja made a killer pasta salad that could’ve fed the entire Revolutionary Army, plus a homegrown cherry cheesecake that absolutely slapped. My lifelong friend Staci brought a fantastic Brussels sprout dish—after much prayer, deliberation, and stress about what to make. You did great, Staci.
At dinner, we shared our favorite things about America. Highlights included: freedom, Aretha Franklin, winning wars, Western movies, our Christian heritage, the country’s landscape, and The Office.
I love this so much! Glad it was a good 4th for you all 💕