Fun Times at the Farm
On Friday I wrapped up the last of my camps with Montgomery College, hastily packed up my belongings, said goodbye to my lovely hosts, and swung around the beltway in DC to pick up Sweetness and Light.
For those of you who have begun following me in the last year, the monikers Sweetness and Light have little meaning, as I haven’t written about them recently. Sweetness and Light are the name of two girls that I was a nanny to for four years – from mid 2010 until mid 2014, when Mr. Turtle and I moved to Richmond. I began working for the family when I moved to DC – underemployed and still with the shine of college. Sweetness was three, Light, just over 10 months.
Now, Sweetness is a precocious eight and Light is going to be six at the end of this month. In the time in between, their parents have become more than friends, their family has increased by one (a 20 month old boy, now), and my employment has deepened into a friendship. About once every four months, Sweetness and Light come for a sleepover, and since I was “in town” anyway, it made sense to “borrow” the girls, and bring them home for a few days.
Light rocking a ball-cap.
So what might have been a relaxing weekend unpacking and decompressing from camp became a joyful visit (perhaps relaxing might not be the word I’d use, but invigorating might fit).
Well, perhaps it was relaxing for Sweetness.
This was a particularly special trip, as we got to take Sweetness and Light to the farm. Sweetness got to drive the riding lawnmower, we took rides in the antique jeep (without seatbelts!), and went to the James River to “ride the rapids,” fish and swim.
On Monday we returned to Ashland, and I dug out the camp materials for one last reprise, and we did needle felting to make 
pillows in honor of Mr. Turtle’s birthday, in a week.
Now the girls are gone, and it’s time to get back to the grindstone. There’s updates to the website, design subs to create, patterns in a backlog that need to be written and edited, and camp stuff to unpack and find homes for.
Come next week, I’ll be trying to get back into the grove of blog-posts that are more informative that update-ish. I’ve also got a bunch of patterns that have come out in the last four weeks, so I’ll spend some time highlighting those!
