Keeping it Real

Yesterday I was catching up on one of my favorite blogs and came across a series of posts that she had written to her daughters called "Dear Daughter" where she gives advice to her three girls about growing up and being a woman. The latest post was titled "Keeping it Real" and you can read it here for yourself, but I'm going to sum it up for you. Basically she was writing about the importance of being transparent in order to relate with others. Not so transparent that you "let it all hang out" so to speak, but enough so that you may let people see you as a real person, with real issues just like everyone else.

When blogging it is so easy to make your life seem perfect to your readers. I don't do this intentionally, but I figure I want to be a positive person, so I try my best not to complain or bring others down with the things going on in my life; so I write about all of the fun, good things. Not to say I have a lot of bad things going on, but I've been getting a lot of comments lately like "how do you find the time to do that with four kids?" or "I don't know how you keep up with a house, a husband, and FOUR kids!" "Where do you find time for yourself??" Well, I'm here to tell you folks.... I don't always have it all together! I'm not a "let it all hang out" kind of person, but I don't want to be one who seems to have everything perfect all the time, because we all know that just ain't happenin. I want to inspire others through my blog, but I don't want to come across as someone who isn't real. So I decided to write my own "Keeping it Real" post.

Yesterday I blogged about making butter with the girls. And I added in a lot of cute pictures... what you didn't see in those pictures was that I was also prepping dinner for the next few days and my kitchen actually looked like this

And my sink looks like this sometimes most all of the time

And while I'm at it, may as well show you how the living room, and play room look on a typical good day

And I won't even mention the piles of laundry hidden around my house, lol.
So when you ask "how do you keep up with it all?" The truth is, I don't. I let things go sometimes so I can do extra stuff with my kids. And when we need to get back on top of things they help me and we get to spend time together in the process. The great thing about young children is that they LOVE to help out! Also, my husband is gone a lot with the Navy, so there are many nights where I put the kids to bed and have some "me" time. (That's also when I get a lot of my crocheting projects done).

So there you have it. I hope this post will inspire others to be more transparent in their lives and keep it real. Just remember, when you see a photo like this

What you're not seeing is this