How can it be August 28th? The weeks have just flown by and it has been a busy but fun summer. As I am writing this it is really overcast outside which I am a bit surprised but if the marine layer is thick enough to head inland where we are at it will stick around for at least half the day. That will be today, much cooler and cloudy, a nice reprieve from the hot summer days. I have to say that we have been lucky this summer, so far it has not breeched 100F (38C) and we have had summers where we have hit 115F (46C) that was years ago, now that’s stinking HOT! I think we will be okay this year and just have the usual 90’s most days. We do not have humidity here, I like to call it a dry heat even though we sweat like crazy working outside with the horses. It cools off very nicely every evening, I can’t complain.

I started out this month of August heading to my family in Arizona. It was my granddaughter’s 7th birthday. It was so much fun to be there to celebrate with the family. I can’t believe she is 7 years old and she is heading into first grade. She has since started school and her dad told me she LOVES first grade, that just makes me smile. 😀 My grand daughter is so smart, funny and quite the character. She’s a wonderful older sister and with her baby brother 2 1/2 years old, I know there’s always a little trouble with sharing. He’s starting to talk more each day which helps with communication between them. They have my heart, love them so much! ❤

She is so adorable as we sang happy birthday with most of the kitchen lights out and the glow of the candles lit so bright! Baby brother was trying to blow out her candles, silly guy and after she made a wish and blew out her candles I took her photo with the cake. My flash went off which caught her by surprise, so cute! She also has poses for her photos which we do not ask her to do of course, and I just giggle as she is so adorable. I will be saying adorable a million times in this post because that’s just the best description. I miss them so very much!!!

We headed to the water park nearby the next day which the kids just love! Me and my selfies, these turned out so great and I went crazy and took one with everyone who went including my daughter and my son. The only one who didn’t come was my daughter-in-law, I feel bad I don’t have a selfie with her and didn’t get one on this visit. The selfie with my grandson is now my background photo on my phone. ❤ I may switch it out soon with the one with my granddaughter! I change them often depending on my mood. 😀

My son and daughter selfies, love this so much! My heart is full and I am feeling blessed to have such a wonderful family and am so happy to be fortunate to have these two grand children who make us laugh and are so full of energy and love. I have lots of photos that I took but wanted to share other events for this month. I can now see the advantage of sharing weekly because I can dedicate the whole post to one event. Since it’s been a month I will continue on and share my horsey photos as my horsey sister arrived just over a week ago. Her son’s birthday was this month and so she flew down from Idaho and stayed a week. We had a ton of fun as she helped me with my young horse Murphy and we rode out on trail with my other horse Chloe. She was able to ride a friends horse with me on the trails.

As I share this month I am thinking of how fast this year has gone by so far. I am terrible at planning things but am thinking I should try and be more conscience of this and try and plan more for the future. I tend to fall into a rut of day to day things and need to think beyond the moment. I blame my lack of planning on being a middle child. I tend to just do things as they come up as one sibling or another make plans and/or my daughter who is the planner of the family makes plans and thankfully I can usually join her or she invites me and her dad. We have planned to meet at President Reagan’s library in 2 weeks as we’ve never been and they have a WW2 presentation there that will end in October. The library is about half way to my daughter’s house so the plan is each of us driving there and meeting up for the tour. I am looking forward to this and am so thankful my daughter is helping plan and getting us there!

This month has been full of events. Our 38th wedding anniversary was August 19th which I almost forgot about but I took that day off to add to the days to hang out with my sister. My hubby and I went out to dinner and he is so sweet and got me some gifts and I got him a sweet card. I took a photo I will share.

Why am I so bad at gift giving in general? I would gladly give away money, my shirt off my back or anything one could want if I can afford it. But I can stress for days and not know what to get and I rarely get him anything for our anniversary as I have no idea what to do, I am serious. I am horrible and I got him a sweet card and that’s it and I will ask him if he needs anything but we have been married for so many years the words romantic don’t strike me as being a great definition of how I feel. I LOVE him with all my heart and I know I am the glue that is our family unit and all I have to offer up is the love and consistent “being here” as I will always be there for my hubby and my family. I guess that is my gift.

I considered removing the last paragraph as I am embarrassed I can’t be more giving in the gift department to show my appreciation and love through material things. I can’t be alone in this world so I am going to leave all of this mumbo jumbo in and say that as I try and figure out the “why” I am like this as I feel rather selfish to not buy him anniversary gifts. I do not expect him to do what he does for me as I would be just as happy and never blink an eye if he just bought me a card and we had dinner out. He almost always gets me these gifts. He got me Jade gifts for our 35th anniversary, me? I got him nothing, zip, zero, nadda….. A big hug and a kiss to thank him! Haha, it is what it is and I am who I am….. Sharing myself to ya’ll wasn’t my plan this weekend. But there it is! 😀

I’ll end with these two photos. My sister riding Murphy! I think I may get a print of this to send to her for Christmas. Or I may make her a photo book with all the photos I have taken this past year of her and Murphy. I thought I would try a selfie with Murph on her last ride. Haha, it turned out pretty cute! Thank you for visiting and having coffee with me today. As I think about this month of August, there are a ton of birthdays. My granddaughter 8/3, my brother 8/4, my nephew 8/14 and my sister’s 8/23 and 8/26. With my anniversary thrown in there 8/19 you can see its a crazy month of celebrations. Most of them were virtual but still, no wonder I have been busy!

I hope you all have had a wonderful August and I am looking forward to the Fall as September is days away. Thank you Natalie for hosting the weekend coffee share link up and I hope you all have a great week ahead.

Loving Family Cowgirl Grandma,

~Diana ❤