My little sister

Here's my little sister, April, with her family. She's married to the nicest guy in the entire world (sorry...Eric!) named Bryan and she has two little punks. :) Ty is the oldest and he is Mr. Joe Cool. He loves sports, hunting, clothes and entertainment stuff. He has a lot of common sense, but also has a short fuse. I used to spend A LOT of time at April and Bryan's house when Ty was a baby and I pretended I was his nanny.

Harlan is so sweet. He has such a huge heart and he never wants to hurt anyone's feelings (or have his feelings hurt...which is easy to do). He's very generous, loves animals, riding horses, watching television and being the big cousin to Luke.

Luke loves Ty and Harlan so much! April and I always crack up watching Luke watch Ty and Harlan. He thinks they are so funny (really they are!!!)! He doesn't have any siblings, but Ty and Harlan are the next best thing. They sometimes fight like siblings, which is good for Luke.

April and Bryan live on 40 acres, have 5 horses of their own (and board 3 more), have a pond, couple of crazy dogs and always something going on. April is the PTO president of her kids' school, owns her own cleaning business, is my grandmother's power of attorney and TONS of other stuff. She is always up to something. It will make you tired just looking at how much she gets done before 9:00 a.m. I'm very proud of her accomplishments.

April and I have always gotten along (except for a few incidents in which scissors got thrown, hair was pulled, both of us getting scratched or slapped...those are stories for another day). Anyway, I could be mad at April, but don't let ANYONE say anything bad about her or that would send me over the edge. We have always had such a close bond. We don't take this lightly and we know what we have is VERY special. We give our God all the honor, glory and praise for placing us together in this lifetime.

Sometimes when people meet us they ask if we are twins. Other times they are shocked that we are even sisters. When we were younger, we didn't look alike at all. But the older we get, the more alike we look. Our parents thought it would be cute for us to even have the same initials-AJL. April got the cool names (April Janel) while I got the little plain Jane names (Amy Jo). When we were little, our mom would dress us alike. And then we were older we would dress similar, but I would wear red and April would always wear blue.

One of my favorite things in the world to do is just to sit and talk and talk and talk with April. We usually don't complete a full sentence (we are both a little A.D.D.) and we pretty much laugh so hard we almost pee our pants! I'm not kidding.

I love my sister so much!

Do you have a sister? Are you and your sister close (like me and April)?

My Aching Back!

This is exactly how I've been feeling for the past few days! I don't know if you have ever had any lower back pain, but IT IS NOT FUN! When I was younger, I never could understand when people would say "my back went out". Now I understand! For the past few years, I have little flareups about twice a year in which I will get a little "twinge" in my lower back that will run down into my bottom. OUCH! Not good!

Last year during one of these episodes I went to see a chiropractor. My mom swears by the "doctors" in the clinic she goes to. I went and actually enjoyed the heat/electrode treatment, but getting popped was not fun. I did not like that doctor dude being ALL UP IN MY SPACE! He was creepy. So I decided this week to go see my doctor. He did some stretching tests and 3 X-rays. Other than a little bit of scoliosis, my spine is great! Doesn't that sound like an oxymoron?!? Anyway, my discs are fine. I'm just having some muscle spasms. Sitting is the worst! And guess what I do all day long? Sit in the floor and in little bitty chairs at work while I work with kiddos!
He gave me some muscle relaxers to stop the muscle spasms! These are great if you have the luxury of staring into space all day long! :) But working while taking them is probably not the best idea.

I really, really feel sorry for people that suffer from back and neck pain all the time. I have several friends with chronic pain and I am going to start praying extra hard for them. It is really hard feeling bad physically. It affects you all over.

Have you ever had any back pain?