Pioneer Romney, Conqueror of Maycember

As Romney was preparing to move home, she was on the hunt for a good summer job. Something with decent pay and plenty of hours. She had shown interest in following in her brother's footsteps and working as Aspen Grove. We were pretty excited about that. However, with her current relationships being what they are, she really didn't want to be away like that for the whole summer. Totally understandable. She was poking around on job lists when our good friend Shelley recommended that she look into working at This is the Place park. The job would entail dressing in pioneer-era clothing and working at the park interacting with guests and taking part in frontier-ish activities such as embroidery, making lace, baking in a wood-fired oven and other things of the kind. The job payed quite well and they said she'd have no troubles getting the hours she wanted.

So, in April, our girl got outfitted with some pioneer fashion and started going to trainings on the weekends. She looks so cute in her uniform. We decided a photo shoot was in order, and that it could only be made better by the addition of chickens. Very period appropriate.

 

When Romney made it through her finals, she was ready to start her so-called summer job. Only...the day she was supposed to start working on a regular basis, we had a full-on Maycemeber snow storm. I know a lot of people refer to May as Maycemeber because of how frightfully busy it is, but this year, it's because we got several inches of snow. I was grateful for the water but a little sad about my flattened flowers which had started to come up. Everything survived though. It was just so funny to be dropping her off at her summer job in the middle of a blizzard. Ok, that's a bit of an exaggeration, but it was truly very cold and wet. The upside of that was that there were very few guests at all, so she had some quiet days to really learn the ropes of her first few assignments. 

Now that it's almost June, I'm happy to say that she is still really enjoying the job, even though she's expecting some really hot days in the uncooled old houses in the park. She has mastered the art of building fires in the stove as well as created some lovely samplers and is now ready to learn the art of lace tatting. Plus, she never has to work on a Sunday and is done every day by 5:00!