December is here! But it certainly doesn’t feel that way with today’s high of 75 degrees. That’s a bit of a difference from our family and friends dealing with Minnesota’s 20 degrees (and they recently got a bit of snow).

We’ve had a busy start to the month, with Andy working his new job and me covering events for different newspapers.

Recently, I attended two different tree lighting events.

Though I could smell the ocean during the one in Oceanside, I have to say that Ramona did a better job at their tree lighting event.

The tree was gorgeous.

They closed down part of Main Street for the event, and it put me and Andy into a festive spirit to listen to the carolers, see the colorful lights, and hear all the laughter.

After a busy week, we decided to take advantage of the nice weather (sunny and in the upper 60s). We went on a new hike.

This trail is not on our list of hikes to complete for the challenge, but we decided to tackle it anyway. I wanted to write about it for my hiking column at work, and we thought it would be a nice trail to take the dogs on.

It was about 3.5 miles over a varied terrain. We even heard a group of coyotes howling from the trees (cool!).

After our hike, we dropped the dogs off at home and went to the Safari Park for a short visit.

We saw three wild deer wandering the grounds of the park.

Afterwards, we had a delicious Indian dinner and went to a movie. We realized that we hadn’t been to an Indian restaurant since our trip to New York City more than two years ago! Crazy!

After our busy week, it was nice to spend time together with each other and the dogs.

We know we will only need to work extra for a short time in the grand scheme of things, but we are still trying to make sure we take advantage of the time we have together in this beautiful slice of the world — someday, we will be leaving it for a new adventure.

More excitement to come in the few months!