Summer is just about done for my kid and in a week, she’ll be home from Colorado for good and she’ll start her senior year in high school. Gah. She has senior pictures on the first day of school so we’re going to be super busy that day and I’m not ready for Brenna to be a senior in high school. On the upside, our family finally has a football player to support so I’ll be watching some high school football thanks to my nephew Chase. Go Saxons!

1. My sister turned 50: Blanche turned 50 this year and she looks fabulous! We had a great big surprise party for her at Mom’s favorite restaurant and even though she was salty that nobody wanted to go to Disneyland with her that day (the only thing she wanted to do) she got over it when she saw everyone that showed up for her party…even her daughters who live in Utah and the other one who was supposed to be in Colorado. It was a great time.

2. Saying Goodbye to Old Friends: My childhood ward dissolved last month and so I spent most of the month hanging out with my childhood friends and reminiscing about the good ol’ days when we would ditch Sunday School to walk to 7-11 or

3. Brenna’s Co-Ed Tournament: Our last year playing in this co-ed tournament and we were the winners of the Losers Bracket. I blame Jonathan for taking 50 shots a game and only making 3…the entire tournament. Ha. Still, it was a lot of fun to watch the kids play for fun and not be under so much pressure to perform on their club and high school teams. There was a lot of laughs and a whole lot of yelling at Jonathan to stop shooting the ball.

1. The Last Ship. It is all Grace’s fault that I did absolutely nothing else with my free weekends but watch every single episode of this show because hot damn, this show is good. Season 3 is underway and I’m blown away with how fresh and explosive each episode is…still.

Grace knows me so well because she knew that I would start the show for this guy:

..and I did. But now I watch and love the show for everyone else too. I have a total girl crush on his wife on the show, Kara Foster. She’s a boss! She’s also freaking gorgeous!

If Holly tells you that I changed the part in my hair to match Kara’s hairstyle in the picture, don’t believe her…much. LOL, who am I kidding?? I totally changed my hairstyle to look like Kara’s cause I’m a freaking weirdo like that. So as you can tell, I freaking love this show and am so stinkin’ sad that I’m all caught up so now I have to watch the show one episode at a time and this waiting business is for the birds. Gah.

2. Bourne. I watched a few movies this month (that’s what happens when your daughter is gone for the summer and you’re a free woman! Yay!) and Jason Bourne was one of them. I almost didn’t make it past about 30 minutes into the movie cause they did my girl Nikki wrong but I was glad that I stuck around because while it wasn’t my favorite Bourne movie, I still liked it.

3. Bad Moms. I didn’t need to watch this movie to know that I was probably a bad Mom. According to my snobby co-worker, bad Moms let their kids eat Lunchables. Brenna loves Lunchables. So being a bad Mom wasn’t anything new to me but after watching this movie, I embraced being a bad Mom because hell, I’m not perfect but my kid is still pretty freaking awesome. She’s well-mannered, she tries hard and she’s respectful of others. Win! This movie was funny. It was all kinds of cheesy too but I didn’t even care, I laughed and laughed and laughed. The kind of movie that you watch every time they show it on TV.

I started writing again, a second chance contemporary romance so while I’m writing, I’m listening to the playlist that inspired the characters and story. Here are some of the songs on that playlist.

1. Dance for You by Beyonce. This song inspired a scene in my story where the heroine gets a little revenge while paying up on a bet she lost to the hero. If you watched the video for this song, Beyonce dances for her man and in my story, so does Sophie. Jack wasn’t ready for Sophie’s dance. Not at all. Ha!

2. Closer by The Chainsmokers featuring Halsey. This is the ultimate second chance romance song, at least for me. The first verse is basically my hero Jack and the second verse is my heroine Sophie. They come together after some time apart and pretty much live out this song. Ha!

3. Blank Space/Style (Taylor Swift Mashup) covered by Louisa Wendorff. This is another song that is all Jack and Sophie. “We go crashing down, we come back every time, we never go out of style…” Everyone knew that these two were meant to be together and that they would stop fighting so hard to not be together eventually because these two were never going out of style and Sophie had a blank space on her list for Jack. Ha!

1. Wild Embrace (Psy/Changelings #15.5) by Nalini Singh | 4 out of 5
2. No Mistress of Mine (An American Heiress in London #4) by Laura Lee Guhrke | 4 out of 5
3. The Rogue Not Taken (Scandal & Scoundrels #1) by Sarah MacLean | 4.75 out of 5
4. A Scot in the Dark (Scandal & Scoundrels #2) by Sarah MacLean | 1 out of 5
5. Rookie Move (Brooklyn Bruisers #1) by Sarina Bowen | 4 out of 5
6. Who’s That Girl? by Mhairi McFarLane | 3 out of 5
7. The Year We Fell Down (Ivy Years #1) by Sarina Bowen (re-read) | 4.25 out of 5
8. The Trouble with Mistletoe (Heartbreaker Bay #2) by Jill Shalvis | 3.5 out of 5
9. Just One Week by Alice Gaines | 1 out of 5
10. Do You Want to Start a Scandal? (Spindle Cove #5) by Tessa Dare | 4.25 out of 5
11. Bedmates (American Royalty #1) by Nichole Chase | 3.5 out of 5

Last month, five of my reviews went live on my book blog Book Binge and if you click on the book covers above, you’ll go right to my review for each of those books.

This is the trendy little spot that my bestie and I had our The Hills lunch at. We ordered spring rolls, egg rolls, shrimp pad thai, a taro smoothie and a chamoy mango smoothie. It sounds like a lot but actually, it was a lot of food but we ate it all and I really liked everything that I had. I’m not a boba girl so I didn’t get any of that boba stuff that Brenna loves so much but everything was great. I will definitely eat here again.

There you have it, everything that I did, watched and read in the month of August. How was your month? Watch anything good? Read anything fabulous? Tell me in the comments!