Keeping up with the Jones.

  So this has been on my mind a lot the past few weeks.  I love blogging/facebook/social media.  It's fun!  It's so fun to stay in touch with friends and family and peek into their lives and see what they're up to, what they've been creating, new babies join their families, their kids head off to the first day of school.  I love it all.  Especially living so far from family and friends, facebook and blogging have been a huge blessing in helping us stay and feel connected. 
   That said, I've also felt uncomfortable many times as people comment to me that they're jealous of our life.  Or how their life seems "boring" next to ours.  I always think to myself....you have no idea what we go through to enjoy these "perks" of traveling, but we don't blog about the bad things.  Much.  We mostly just share the cute pictures, the beautiful pictures, the skinny pictures (although those don't really exist right now), the ones that shed the most flattering light on our family.  I think that's human nature.  I throw in a few funny stories and thoughts to keep it interesting, but when it comes down to it, no one wants to read a whiney/complainey blog.
  What people forget is that we are a military family.  So yes, we get to go see some neat places.  The trade off for that?  I have no husband half of the time. Being a single Mom is HARD.  Really hard.  When it's time for me to have a baby (in a foreign land, I might add) I have no family to drop my kids off to.  I have no Mom to come and help for a week while I recover.  We can't have our families oooh and awe over our beautiful new baby.  That's really hard for me. 
   If it came down to it and I had to pick between living in one place for the rest of our lives and having a husband home every night at 5 and on the weekends and being close to family (at least close enough to go and visit without 24 hours of traveling) or our current situation.....I think I'd pick the regular life.  I think a life of having Daddy gone half the time is hard on kids and it's certainly hard on me, but we make the best of what we have and are grateful for the blessings of a good job, and stability.
  The point I'm getting at is....it's so easy to look at other people's blogs and think "they are so much more creative than me" but what we don't see is the rest of the house is destroyed by the kids who are dying for Mom's attention while she's creating.  Or to think "their kids are so smart!" but we're not seeing how that child is struggling with interacting socially.  Or see a lovely home that they have bought, but we're not seeing their mortage payment and finances in a mess.  People will blog what sheds their family and their lives in the most flattering light...and that's impossible to keep up with.  When I'm looking at someones blog and I find myself feeling inadequate, I just remind myself, THIS IS NOT REAL.  It's not.  I continue to remind myself that as long as I'm doing what's best for my family and trying my best be happy, despite whatever may be thrown at us, I'm in a good place. 
  The moral of the story is...trying to keep up with Jones' blogging life is even harder than trying to keep up with your neighbors.  At least with the neighbors you will occassionally hear the Mom screaming at her children.  Or see the weeds growing in their garden.  Or see their kids being much less than perfect.  You won't find that on blogs...which makes the goal of keeping up even more impossible.