Photography: Time-lapse

I’m pretty bad at keeping plants alive, and I have had a basil plant for a while that can attest to the number of times I have almost let it die. For some reason, I just wouldn’t think about watering the basil plant until it was almost completely wilted. I’m getting better and better at this, but the amazing thing is that the little plant would bounce back so quickly, going from wilted to vibrant in no time!

I thought it would be cool to capture the process on camera, so I let the plant wither a little bit, then I watered it and set the camera to take a picture of the plant about 8 seconds for a couple of hours while the plant slowly came back to life… here’s the result. In case you’re wondering, the sweet guitar melody is just a little something my brother recorded on the fly years ago, but I thought it went nicely with the video.

Easter Day

He is risen! (Feel free to respond loudly to the computer monitor.) We had a great Easter day today. We went to the early service at church, dropped by the market to grab some freshly picked Cambridge strawberries, and then headed home with said strawberries in order to fire up our newly purchased ice cream maker :). That’s right, folks, the world is a different place now that the Bullards have an ice cream maker. Every item in the grocery store is now split into two categories: (1) things we can put in ice cream, and (2) I forget what the second category is… it doesn’t really matter.

We’ll give you a run down of the ice cream making later, for now, all you need to know is that we were making the strawberry ice cream to take to an Easter BBQ at a friend’s place. It was fantastic! Of course it was great to be around people that we love on Easter, so the awesome food and beautiful day was just a bonus. Plus, it’s hard to beat THREE different kinds of homemade ice cream on top of everything else… we had Oreo (cookies n cream), Chocolate, and (my favorite) Strawberry.

I ate a lot, and I thought I had a bit of a belly going… so we had a comparison…

The guys manning the grill…

After the BBQ and ice cream, we sat around chatting for a while, and then decided that it was a lovely day for a bit of croquet… so went over to Jesus College, where the grounds are so beautiful that any excuse to get your toes into the grass is a good idea. Here are the girls with a couple of croquet mallets with Jesus college in the background.

Candice got the hang of it pretty quickly, and nearly led her team to victory… I think our little guy was making it difficult for her though :)…

Here’s a shot of the boys sitting back watching the girls battle it out on the croquet pitch…

After the croquet matches, we were feeling a bit too English, so we tried to compensate with America’s favorite past-time… we had a bat and a tennis ball, and enough people to have a pretty respectable game of six on six Baseball! Needless to say, after all the chatting, croquet, and baseball, we were all beat and starting to get hungry again. So we headed back to see what we had leftover from the BBQ that we could turn into dinner.

It was a full day, in more ways than one… life felt very full indeed.

Cambridge Springtime

The weather has been glorious. Cambridge is a different place in the spring and summer. If, for example, you come to visit us in the winter, we would probably have your pity for having to cope with the short days; but if you come to visit during the summer, we would probably be the object of your envy for living in such a beautiful place.

I’m sure this is exaggerated; those of you who are lucky to have good weather most of the year may not think anything of a day that is sunny and 75… but to us, there’s something about it that is healing to the soul.

In any case, I’ve blogged about all that before… but the change in the weather is just such a big event over here that I thought it worth the mention.

So, in true British fashion, we’ve been doing several things over the past couple of weeks: a) looking out the window every 30 mins. just to make sure the sun really IS out, b) going outside just to stand there and put our faces in the sun, c) exclaiming to everyone how hot it is when the temp gets above 70 :).

Here’s a few highlights from our recent walks along Grantchester meadows to enjoy the weather:

Friends: the Dixons and the Appels.

Our way  was blocked by some cows, so we had to take a detour… and things didn’t work out so well for Nicki… I really like this picture, though… I think it’s a good image of fun on a spring day :).

Candice looking happy… probably because she is.

Here’s one from yesterday… our friends Simon and Alice got back into town and we got to hang out with them for first time in nearly 5 months! Here’s Simon throwing a grape at me :)

Here we are… looking happy again…

Here’s Candice at 32 weeks! Doesn’t she look great?!

Here’s the delightful lemon cake from the Orchard (a nice place to have tea near the river)… while I was in line getting the lemon cake, I’m pretty sure a British girl hit on me! She said that my lemon cake looked good, so she got the same thing. Then she asked if I came to the Orchard often, and was sure to mention that the guy she was with was just her ‘friend.’ Yep, Collin’s still got the magic :)!

The rapeseed is full on, and it makes the fields along Grantchester meadows bright gold… it’s pretty awesome…

There’s so much more to blog about… Happy Easter to everyone. Talk to you soon.

Mail call

Who doesn’t love getting mail? And when something special from a good friend arrives, it's even better! Two days in the past week turned out to be good mail days.

Last week we got a much anticipated package from our dear friend Tiffani. Inside was this beauty:

It's a gorgeous baby quilt with a classic look on one side and a fun monkey print on the other. We love it! I have seen a few other things Tiff has made for other expecting mums and dads and think this is, without a doubt, her best work yet! Since I'm no sewing expert, you can read more about Tiffani's adventure in making this quilt here.

And then today Collin burst through the door carrying a box that had clearly made its way across the Atlantic. I couldn't wait to tear into it, especially when I saw it had come from the Anderson's, who are our long lost friends in South Dakota. Inside we found this too-cute of a plush toy block, handmade by Carrie:

Along with a these two precious blankets, made by Carrie's awesome mama. (Thank you, Ms. Evie! I love that we are Facebook friends!)

Carrie and Marc also sent us the most adorable little hat that I cannot wait to put on Jabar and several books, a few for baby and a few for us. This is right up our alley, especially with my newfound freedom and extra time to read. I will share with you the funniest one:

On the front is a spinner titled 'The Wheel of Responsibility'. 7 out of the 8 options on wheel say 'dad' is the responsible party. :) Thanks for a good laugh, Andersons! Carrie blogs about life and crafty things here.

While we are far away from family and old friends and could let that be a bummer during this pregnancy and the arrival of Jabar, small and large things are always reminding us that the same people we are missing are already loving our little guy from across the ocean.

Caution: your baby is in mortal peril

Parents-to-be should be given a directory of people to call who have been-there-done-that-got-the-t-shirt. You know, so we could call a veteran at any time of day or night just to say 'Is it really NECESSARY to buy a cute (read: expensive) hand-made bumper for the crib?' (The answer appears to be no, it's not only unnecessary, but may cause actual harm to my baby should I invest in such a cute, decorative accessory. Who knew?) Thankfully, we have an army of family and friends of the parenting variety on whom we can call to discuss our hyper-sensitive wonderings. Just today I Facebooked a friend and said 'Do we really have to wash Jabar's clothes in a different detergent than the brand we use for our own clothes?' (She said it's a good idea; the baby's skin will be much more sensitive than ours.)

The hard part about all of this is that every family does it differently, don't they? And everyone, not just super-moms like Michelle Duggar, but everyone who has a child, has ever been around a child, or even has as second-cousin-in-law under the age of 15, thinks they know the way and the truth about all things baby. And they aren't shy to share their inarguable truths, are they? Which, don't get me wrong, is great when we have questions or feel lost about just what size of diapers (don't even get me started on what KIND of diapers) we should use for our little man.

But sometimes I just have to wonder if it's all necessary. Will my baby's brain really not develop properly if he watches the television screen for 5 minutes? Will his hips really align incorrectly if we put him in a particular brand of carrier a time or two? I just can't help but think probably not. Hey, I'm no veteran, but I have a few second-cousins-in-law who don't seem to fret about such things, and they are doing just fine.

End note: While we like to think we are super calm and relaxed about all of this, don't hold us to it. :) We fully recognize and admit that once the little guy arrives, we are going to be a big bundle of nervous energy and will be forever grateful for anyone who shows up at our flat reminding us not to sweat the small stuff. I think I might just cry tears of joy when my sister shows up and laughs in the face of all of this 'that's going to kill your baby' hooplah.