Visit with Cici

Directly after we returned home from our vacation to California, my sister Cari came up here to Oregon for a visit while she was on vacation from teaching school. During our trip down South, Cari had been taking a vacation of her own with her husband Julio to Hawaii to celebrate earning her Master's degree in Education, hooray! So this way she got to spend some private time with her favorite nephew. Things were not looking good for a little while before her arrival when our air conditioning broke--I thought that I might have to move our spare bed into the freezer to make things comfortable enough for her to sleep--but it luckily got fixed just hours before her flight arrived in Portland. However, the "cold" that I thought I had contracted turned out to be laryngitis instead. I had a hoarse, sore throat that was developing into a nice chest cough, and two days after Cari's arrival my voice was completely gone. Fun! But that didn't stop us from showing her the sights.
We took Alton to the Portland Children's Museum so that he could touch and play with eeeeeeverything.

We cooled down in the backyard with fruit bars.

Andy and Cari took Alton to the Zoo on Saturday morning so that Mommy could convalesce at home with her sore throat (although Mommy rallied that night and conspired with Cari to cook up a fabulous fondue feast while Alton was sleeping).



We horsed around at home and practiced Alton's new word: Cici. Cari had been trying very hard to get Alton to say "Aunt Cari," but that's a pretty big mouthful for a little guy! Picking up on his ability to say Uncle KC's name ("ke-SEEEEEEEE"), Cari decided that she would also go by her initials, which are C.C. So all weekend long she was working on Alton with "Cici...Cici." He could definitely say it by the time she left!



The day of her departure, Cari, Alton and I rushed out to West Union Gardens, a local U-pick-em berry farm. We were pressed for time (against the napping hour!) and Cari and I hurried up and down the berry rows, tossing berries into our containers while Alton leisurely moved along, picking some berries, eating some berries (no pesticides, so you're free to sample!), and, inexplicably, tossing some on the ground (actually, I think he did this because there were so many berries on the ground already from overripe-ness, or from other patrons dropping them, so Alton may have thought that they belonged there). But we hurried for good reason: after we got home and put the baby to bed, Cari hopped in the shower to wash off berry farm dust while I washed the berries and concocted a DELICIOUS homemade berry cobbler in our dutch oven with a golden brown, fluffy biscuit top. It hurt your eyes, it was so beautiful.


We'll miss you Aunt Cari (Cici), and come again soon!