Crazy Week!

The view as I left the house yesterday morning.

I'm using my lunch break at work to take the opportunity to write what may very well be the only blog post I can manage this week.  My husband has a mandatory work training that goes from 8:30 to 5:30 every day this week.  As if the timing issue wasn't bad enough, he says the trainer is terrible and takes at least twice as long as necessary to show everything.  Did I mention this training is for teachers?  I can't imagine they would be the most patient audience with an inept presenter, I'm glad I'm not in that guy's shoes right now.

Monday evening the whole family had dentist appointments.  Tuesday evening we had piano practice for the kids from 5:15 to 6:15, which is especially important because they have a recital coming up.  Except that on Monday we were notified that my daughter needed to be at school on Tuesday to rehearse for her 7:00 band concert at 5:15.  So she had to miss piano lessons and get dropped off at school, and my son had to go to piano lessons late.  The one good thing is that my husband and I were able to get a walk in while my son was at piano lessons.  It gave us a few minutes to just talk, and to enjoy some nature.

Apparently new pine cones are purple.  Who knew?

These tulips are such a dark purple they look almost black.  They are so lovely I had to stop and grab a photo.

The coming storm made for very interesting skies.

After the piano lesson finished we rushed over to my daughter's school where most of the bleachers were already filled at 6:35.  We found a seat fairly high up, but right in front of my daughter.  Of course I didn't realize that her band teacher would be conducting from right in front of her.  Sigh...
The band concert didn't end until 8:45, which was far longer than I was expecting, and significantly longer than my almost 10-year old wanted to sit still.  My own rear end was protesting quite loudly by the end of the concert, as were my knees; those bleachers weren't designed for full-sized adults.  Also, with all that body heat I thought I was going to pass out from heatstroke.  But the kids played great, and they finished in style.  The last song of the evening was played by all the bands together and it was Pirates of the Caribbean.  That is a swashbuckling song and definitely ended the concert on a high note (pun totally intended!)  We didn't sit down to eat dinner until after 9:00, which is after my bed time since I get up at 4:15 in the morning.

This evening I have to get my son to a doctor's appointment, my daughter to a meeting about her rapidly upcoming Europe trip, and my husband has band practice.  Tomorrow evening my son is supposed to have gymnastics and a play at school, I think we're going to have to skip gymnastics for the week in favor of making it to the play on time.  These school events are a little hard on all of us right now because my dad always came to these, so this is the first time he's not attending.  Friday evening we're going to be hosting Mother's Day at my house for my mom.  I asked my brother if he could do it on Sunday and he said he had a hockey game but didn't know when, and didn't know when he'd find out, so Friday it is.  This is what our week looks like and we don't even have our kids in competitive leagues, I don't know how some of our friends keep up since I'm barely hanging on.

I had a doctor's appointment today for a check-up and to talk with my doctor about the fact that I'm concerned that I have hypothyroidism.  He looked at all my physical problems and listened to all of my symptoms and agreed that something's wrong and ordered blood work a full battery of tests.  I'm actually kind of relieved that he agrees something is physically wrong.  I didn't know what I was going to do if he said everything looked fine, because I'm tired of feeling exhausted all the time.  Although we won't know for sure until the results come back from the tests, so I guess I shouldn't get my hopes up too high yet.  It's sort of perverse to be hoping for something to be wrong, but if we can treat this and I can feel better, that will be a good thing.

I'm practically giddy with all of the nature that's waking up around me.  (Well, as close to giddy as I'm capable of getting right now when I'm feeling pretty crummy most all the time and fighting depression).  While I love winter and got some wonderful shots this past season, I love having color in my photos.  I also don't think it hurts that spring is still fairly new and I just haven't gotten bored with it yet.  Hopefully my readers aren't bored either!

I LOVE my little patch of violets, even if they grow out in our grass also.

I thought we'd lost the bleeding hearts twice, once when we had to pull out some dead evergreens near them, and then after a frost.  But here they are again.  They're such lovely (and hearty, in more ways than one) flowers.

Our maple trees are dropping flowers everywhere in our yard, and our steps to the deck are covered.

My purple irises are about to open up.  I always know Mother's Day is here when I see these blooms.

Our ash tree literally got leaves overnight; it did not look like this yesterday.

So that's my check-in in the midst of an exceptionally busy week.  I'll probably have to go silent now until this weekend.  I hope you all have a great week and have more downtime that I do!