May is my killer month. All the year-long activities come to an end with big parties, while soccer and other summer sports are ramping up. May is our month when we have at least two activities on every weeknight, plus a few things on the weekend, and I just run from one thing to the next. I like to say to Sir Monkeypants, in a smart alec-y kind of way, “I’ll see you in June,” but it isn’t far off the mark. He goes one way, I go the other, and in between it’s all baking brownies and cutting up watermelon.

May is pretty lucky, I’ll tell you, that it has such nice weather. It’s kind of like a newborn baby – the adorableness helps mollify the horror. A bit, anyway, until I get out there and attempt to weed the gardens. SHUDDER.

If you’ve seen me out and about with pink and purple hands, that’s because on top of everything else, I’ve been tie dying. Gal Smiley is in the grade 5/6 level of her soccer league and it’s always a small level because it’s a super casual community league, and usually by that age all the kids that are actually interested in soccer have moved on to a higher level. Last year they had four teams in this level but this year they have only two teams. That means the same two teams will play against each other every week, which is fine, but what is NOT FINE, NOT FINE AT ALL is the colour of their shirts: light grey and light blue. TWO TEAMS, people. They couldn’t have ordered shirts in, say, red and yellow? Navy and bright green? Black and white?

Sigh.

At the first game, the kids in Gal Smiley’s side both a) passed the ball to the other team multiple times, and b) stole the ball from their own players, multiple times. Sadly, I am not the kind of person who can let this sort of thing stand, so I collected all the light blue shirts and tie dyed them, with the help of the girls. Now they look like this:

It was an ugly amount of work but I suppose worth it for how thrilled the kids were with their shirts. Gal Smiley actually asked if she could wear it to school. As far as soccer shirts go, that’s a major elevation from the others that are stuffed in a drawer somewhere. Plus, it gave me that Laura Ingalls Wilder feeling to be standing over a steaming vat of cloth and dye, wiping my brow with one hand while wearing a plastic Crayola painting bib meant for toddlers. It’s a good look for me, I think.

In other Gal Smiley news, she had her last guides meeting ever last night, as she’s now aged out of the program (and, interestingly, has decided to go to Scouts next year instead of Pathfinders, which is the next level of guiding). Little Miss Sunshine had her last brownies meeting ever last week as she’s now moving up to guides, and in both cases the leaders were just SO fantastic. They put so much work into the graduation and into all the stuff they did all year and most of the leaders cried when the girls were leaving. One of Gal Smiley’s leaders wrote each leaving girl a thank-you note, thanking them for making her into the leader she is today, and telling each what great qualities they bring to this world. SO NICE. I really cannot say enough fabulous things about the whole program and the ladies who give so much of their time to make that happen.

And now I must run – the new flowers in the garden need watering, I’m making some buns for dinner, I have one last shirt to tie dye, and I need to cut oranges as we’re on soccer snack tonight. But I’ll probably also squeeze in a popsicle on the porch after picking up the kids. May is madness – but it’s glorious, too.