Happenings

Here's a little taste of what we have been to these days.

Lots of bubbles were blown (and spilled) this week.

We celebrated Earth Day with a lovely spring hike and picnic in the woods.

On Saturday, we found ourselves in Bellingham with a few hours to kill while Liam was at a birthday party, so we headed to Fairhaven's Dirty Dan Days Festival, celebrating the scoundrel who founded Fairhaven.

Here we are with Dirty Dan himself.

Grace and Sam made felted wool balls at the Toy Garden booth.

Part of the process was putting a ball of wet wool in a stocking and beating it repeatedly on the ground.  You can bet Sam enjoyed this activity.

And here's the poor husband who patiently puts up with his wife's love of festivals, street fairs, and local markets.

We took the ocean kayak down to the bay at sunset for her maiden voyage.  It is a very sweet little boat.  

Some people dressed a little more stylishly for the big launching.

The seemingly endless supply of gorgeous weather led us down to the state park again today for some zipline and swinging fun with friends.

I can't stop laughing about this picture:

Doesn't Garreth look like a little munchkin?  Something about the angle I took it from just made it turn out hilariously!  I think I'll call it "Liam and the Oompa Loompa."

And this officially catches me up on my blogging.  Good thing, too, because we leave on Wednesday for some good times in California with all the Beckstead family, and there are many fun pictures yet to be taken and great memories to blog about!   

See you soon!

Fame!

Been wondering who the new "face of safety" at the ConocoPhillips Ferndale refinery is?

Why, it's baby Liam Ratchford, of course!

Garreth submitted this idea using a picture of Liam that was hanging in his office and before he knew it, Liam's face was plastered all over the refinery.  Let's hope all this new-found fame doesn't go to his cute, bald little head!

"I'm pretty sure there's more to life...

...than being really really ridiculously good-looking."

(Really wish I could take credit for these, but they were done by a professional!)

Our Week

Not too much going on around here these days.

This week we went to Bedtime With Books at Liam's school.

I got out of the shower one morning to find these two cuddled up while watching Dora.

After three weeks of practice, Liam finally had his first baseball game.  He is a great little athlete and I love watching him practice and play.  He also started wrestling one night a week. Not sure how I feel about that one yet, but with the dad Liam has I don't really have much say in the matter!  So there will probably be a singlet purchase in our future, but if anyone could pull off looking cute in one of those, it's Liam.

All the fun of being pitcher without all the hard work!

Garreth put together a shed this week so we can finally tackle this little garage problem...

Our work is cut out for us.

Easter Weekend in Oregon

We are back from a great weekend in Oregon!  

We left Thursday morning with our new little GPS gadget, which I thought would turn out to be a waste of money, even though we got a killer deal on it.  It didn't take too long to change my mind!   Instead of stopping at the nearest fast food restaurant for meals on the road, we were able to find great little local pizza shops and delis.  Plus, we had so many stops to make along the way that it was great to have the directions right there and not worry about MapQuesting everything.  Great purchase!

When we first plugged in the GPS, we got to choose the voice that would give us directions and we chose a British guy named Tim.  Whenever Tim would tell us to exit or turn, we'd say "Thanks, Tim!"  Sometimes if we stopped to get gas without telling Tim, he'd tell us to "Turn around immediately" and we'd pretend to be mad at him ("Stop telling us what to do, Tim!  You're so bossy!").  This would really upset Sam, and finally he said sternly to Garreth and me, "Stop being rude to Tim!  He is a REALLY GOOD PERSON!"  

Our first stop was at the Oregon Zoo in Portland.  It was a little overcast and we pretty much had the whole zoo to ourselves, which was awesome.

One of our favorite parts of the zoo was the polar bears.  One of them was swimming laps and we got to watch him swim RIGHT by us through the underwater tank.  

Sam was hesitant to turn his back on him!

My favorite animals in the world are elephants, so of course I loved the mom and baby elephant exhibit.  The mom was getting a pedicure and the zookeepers kept feeding the baby apple slices to keep her busy.  It was fun to watch her scoop them up with her trunk.

After an afternoon at the zoo, we spent the night in Vancouver, WA with our friends, the Tobiassons, then left the next morning for Eugene, where we got to see some of our favorite people ever:

We had a whole weekend of cousin time and loved it!

Saturday was a great day, as we got to go to the baptism of our uncle and brother-in-law, Tracy.  (Quincy's husband.)  It was a beautiful service and the chapel was filled with family and ward members there to share the special day.   

After a yummy lunch,

we spent some time at the Eugene Saturday market.

Nana bought each of the kids a present from the vendors.  Grace got a stuffed snake, Sam got a wooden toy horse, and Liam...?  Well, all he wanted was a Grateful Dead-heads for Obama pin, as shown below:

It was a great market, lots to see and do...

...but it wore some people right out.

Saturday afternoon, we had a huge backyard Easter egg hunt...

...and the kids got lots of great treasures.

We loved hanging out with everybody, whether it was playing dress-up...

...or rocking out to Rock Band.

We woke up Easter morning happy to see that the Easter bunny had found us in our hotel room.

Declan is becoming the new Ratchford ham in pictures, witnessed below with his "Home Alone" impression:

And also, playing Rock Band drums on his brother's heads.

After church, it was time to go home, but not before one last cousin picture:

It was so much fun to spend the holiday with so many people that we love.  Thanks, Brandts, for a great weekend!  We love you guys!