The Party's Over

Do you ever find yourself comparing your life, your marriage, your photography/crafting skills, your writing ability, your whatever with the lives, marriages, skills, and abilities of other bloggers?  It's so easy to slip into the trap of thinking, "Wow, her life is so much...prettier...than mine."  Or, "Wow, she thinks her husband is wonderful all of the time."  You begin to wonder, "What's wrong with me?"


Steve and I were discussing being Real the other night, and I think that can apply not only to interactions with people in our physical area, but also to how we portray ourselves in the online arena.  Of course, there's a balance to be sought...you don't really need to know the minute details of some nervous breakdown I had last week.  However, it would be a lie to pretend that life is picture perfect all of the time.

Speaking of picture perfect, yesterday was Steve's birthday and AnnieLou's birthday.  I/we hosted a party on Thursday night which involved cramming about 18 people into our teeny weeny living room/dining room and feeding them lots of tacos and cake.  Throughout the day, I had visions of taking a billion Martha Stewart Living-style photos to detail the event, just so I could put them on my blog and say, "Tee-hee!  I have a pretty life, too!"

Guess what?  Not only was the party about as far removed from Martha Stewart Living as you could get (I dropped Steve's birthday cake), but I totally and entirely forgot to even get my camera out of its case.  Brilliant, I tell you.  So today I get to practice being Real about the birthday party:

Behold the remains of the Double Chocolate Roll birthday cake.  It was very yummy (you can't beat homemade chocolate whipped cream), although not as attractive as I would have liked.  People enjoyed it, as evidenced by the lack of leftovers.

Behold the state of our kitchen following the party.  It really was very clean earlier that day.  And it's clean again, thanks to Steve.

Behold the empty gift bags.  At least they weren't empty when they were handed to the Birthday People.

Behold the sleepy night-shift-working Birthday Boy.

There you have it: a Real Amelia Rodgers birthday party, documented 18 hours after the event.  Even if I wasn't pulled together enough to create Beautiful Blogdom with it today, that most definitely doesn't negate the fun time we had as a family.  Plus, it's an opportunity to practice what I want to preach about being Real, not only with the peeps around me, but with online friends as well.

(Hey, we actually have a Saturday today and we were up at 6:58am...what's wrong with this picture?)