man that sucks

okay it is 2:00 in the morning and i am up...why? Because i heard the phone ring and by the time i got out of bed they had already left a message. Guess who it was... Michelle! I freaking missed her call. She says that she will call back in the morning, i am assuming in the normal morning. Hopefully she does get a chance to call. I miss her and i really wanted to speak to her. So keep your fingers crossed that she calls again. Apparently she called twice but seeing as how i am a deep sleeper, i missed the first call completely and i just caught the second one as she was leaving a message. That just totally sucks!

MICHELLE CALL BACK!!! I MISS YOU!!!

(Looks like i am sleeping next to the phone)

~April~

update from IRAQ

ok not much to say today, just wanted to give alittle update. I am finally sleeping longer with out any meds. I couldnt ask for more. See when everything happened in april with spc colburn i went in a real slump , i wasnt eating or sleeping. so i was sent up north for medical evaluation when they diagnosed me with so much stuff, acute stress reaction, anxioty, panic attacks, insomnia... and the lise goes on. so therefore they gave me some sleeping pills to calm down my reoccuring dreams of April 22nd. now dont get me wrong i still dream about what happened i have just learned to coltrol my dreams and not wake up screaming from them anymore. Anyways... so now i am sleeping without all the meds.
but today things kidof set in again. i woke up at 11:30 pm and decided that it was time to go talk to my battle buddy. i walked all the way over to his door and when i went to go knock i relized that he isnt there to talk to me anymore when i am feeling down. that is when i really miss gavin the most.
anyways things are going better and like i said before i just am taking everything one day at a time. i stopped talking to the combat stress unit here because i feel like they dont know what the fuck they are talking about.. which just pisses me off because they are supossed to be there for people/ soldiers who have been throgh a rough time.
i am so ready to get out of this heat and back to the beautiful ohio wheather, and of course be home for the birth of my new niece or nephew... april i am also leaning tword and nephew from the way everyone is talking about how big she already is. by the way when can i expect babies from the shah side of the pfister family.
anyways 100 days or is it less i dont fucking know they keep switching the day everyday.. last count was 103 days so i hope that is the right count.
just thought i would update everyone... almost done cant wait.
ill write more later.


spc michelle e pfister
q-west iraq

For those of you who are wondering

With all the other blogging i have been doing lately, i almost forgot to update you all on my sister Amber and her prenancy. Anyways, she went to the doctor's monday and, Praise the Lord, she is only having one. So that leaves only one possible explination for why she looks like she is about 5 months along, when she is only like 9 weeks. They must have screwed up her due date right? RIGHT! Well, sort of right. Anyways, her original due date was for the beginning of February. Now, she is due, get this......

THE END OF FEBRUARY!!

WTF? They pushed her due date back! I am guessing that she is having a boy because a girl would be sympathetic and not make her mom gain a whole bunch of weight all at once. So we will see if my boy prediction is right.

I am not really feeling like blogging much today. So my continued post on michelle will have to wait until either tonight or tomorrow morning. I am working on 7 days in a row of work and i am rather grumpy today. I hate my job! I wish i could just quite! Not possible unless i can find a job that will pay me close to the same amount and still give me 40 hours a week.

Anyways, I got to go get ready to go to the craphole that is my job!

talk to you all later!

~April~

My sister

Okay,
for those of you who don't know my sister is SPC. Michelle E. Pfister (told you i occasionally get your rank right Michelle)! Anyways, she is 20, almost 21, and is currently serving over in Iraq. Which kinda sucks but I am proud of her for taking on such a big responsibility. I know i couldn't have done it. She has been through a lot there. Including the loss of her fellow soldier, friend and brother SPC. Gavin J. Colburn. For further reading on that check out what Mustang 23 had to say about it here. But anyways...on with the post.

So my sister is serving in Iraq. She has less then 100 days until she is done. I just pray that she focuses on the job that she has left to do and not on the fact that she is coming home. I know she wants to come home so bad but she just needs to focus on getting her job done so she can get the hell out of there. In her down time she can think about coming home all she wants but when she is working she needs to think about work. Rant...done!

So Michelle and I are pretty close. We were both born on October 3rd. However I was born in 1982 and she was born in 1984. We shared a room for about 13 or so years. You learn a lot about a person from sharing a room with them for that long. I remember getting in trouble all the time (and i mean all the time, we never listen) for being to loud because we would stay up late a night just talking about anything and laugh real loud and not even think about the fact that everyone else was trying to sleep. I remember when we lived in Bradford, we had bunk beds, and i would sleep on the top, michelle was on the bottom, but for some reason we would never stay there. By morning one of us would be in the other one's bed. It was much easier to talk that way! Or even when we moved to Pleasant Hill and we would go to bed around 9 but we would be up real late playing Playstation (with the sound off of course) until like midnight. We loved to play racing games together. Although Michelle would always win! I still think that she had figured out a way to cheat. I remember when I was about 12 and she was 10. My dad had built a go-kart. I managed to run it into a tree and them Michelle, i think she was sympathizing with me, managed to somehow run it into the jungle gym.

hey michelle remember the Snoopy table set we got for our birthday when you were like 6 and I was 8? Remember trying to play doctor and we used that as the operating table? Then remember how crushed we were when it broke. Like we didn't see that coming. that thing was made out of the cheapest parts possible, I think. I miss the Snoopy table and the Woodstock, Linus, Lucy and Charlie Brown chairs :(

However we didn't always get along. Sharing the same birthday and being exactly two years apart comes with it's ups and downs. I remember when mom was working and I had to cook supper and I asked Michelle to peel potatoes or something. Something happened and we got into an argument and she threw the potato peeler at me. Which preceeded in us running around the house trying to catch eachother so we could pound the crap out of one another. I don't remember if we ever actually caught eachother or if mom walked through the door first. But all i remember is that we spent a lot of time fighting with eachother over one thing or another. 90% of the time it was over stupid stuff. I remember when i was like big into 90210 (wow, there's a flashback) and I had a poster of all the people from 90210 and Michelle got pissed at me for something and poked a hole in it. Boy was I pissed. I don't remember what I did in return but it wasn't good I am sure. We would mostly fight when we had to clean our room and we would just pick up our own stuff. There was no helping the other person, because mom gave you time limits. Well, we would spend most of the time piling stuff up on the other person's side of the room. Yes, there was a time when we actually divided the room into halves. And the doorway was divided in half. And you had to stay on your side of the room. Lest you get the crap beat out of you!

But we weren't always horrible to eachother. A little sibling rivalary is good every now and then. I still remember a couple of years ago Michelle came home with a hamster and tried to hide it from mom and dad (what was his name michelle? I think you named it after someone off of Lord of the Rings?) Anyways, my mom's rule was no more pets in the house! This was after Michelle had finished Basic and A.I.T and we had put our dog, Peaches, to sleep after we had had her for like 8 years. Anyways, Amber and Michelle went to Wal-Mart, mind you Amber didn't live at home at the time and still doesn't, and Michelle had bought a hamster. I had been at work or something. Mom and Dad were out of town. Anyways, I get home from work and Michelle walks through the door with a Hamster! Holy shit, i knew that we were all going to die from this. Anyways, michelle figured she could safely hide the hamster in her room and mom would never notice (yeah right, does anyone else see where this is going? I mean seriously, pets, i don't care what kind, smell!) So anyways, mom and dad come home, they are home for about 7 hours or so (surprised it was that long) Mom goes upstairs and the next thing I hear is "APRIL!!!!!!" WTF? So I go upstairs and my mom is like "why does michelle have a hamster?" I don't know! "Why did you let her get a hamster?" Wait a minute, I had nothing to do with this! So yeah, michelle ended up getting in trouble. She got to keep the hamster! Until she got ready to go to Iraq, then it was bye bye hamster. We ended up selling it to some kid.

Hey michelle, remember when you, me and Dad made a leash for your hamster and et it walk around the garage? Okay everyone don't call PETA. We didn't harm it in anyway!

So yeah, that brings up to Michelle getting ready to sign up for the Army. I will post more about that later! Stay tuned for My Sister Part II!

Michelle if you have anything to add go ahead and post it. I am just feeling sentimental today! I will post more later!

Fun times

Hey everyone,
I know i haven't posted in a while. Been busy with work and life stuff...I know I know that really isn't an excuse. If people who are fighting a war can find time to blog almost daily then i should be able to blog like two or three times daily. Anyways... A little update on stuff happening in the Shah/Pfister world....

Well, this first update is more for Michelle because she is kind of being left out of the loop on the whole situation. Not on purpose, but just because there really isn't much to tell about it... Okay.... My older sister is pregnant with her "second" child. Michelle will understand why I put second in quotation marks! Anyways, she is only supposivly 9 weeks along but she looks like she is about 5 months. So yeah, either she is further along than what she is, or... SHE'S HAVING TWINS!!! If the latter turns out to be true then i will be truely pissed. Mostly because this girl can't afford the kid she has. Also, I just don't think that they will be able to handle twins when they have trouble handling one. Yes, they might be able to take care of another one considering that Alexis is almost 4 (Will be on the 10th of August). But i just don't think that they could handle having two kids in diapers and a four year old who is used to having all the attention and now doesn't! Plus if there experiance with pets is any indication of parenting skills, well Michelle can attest to the fact that they fail miserably when it comes to that test!

Amber will find out tomorrow if she is having twins or if they just messed up her due date. So yeah, keep your eyes glued to this blog. Because come tomorrow around 10:30 there might be either one relieved, or one really angry and really long blog on here around that time.

Okay....getting away from that subject... my husband got a new job, closer to home, at Home Depot here in Faiborn. It seemed like a good ideal at first until he actually got the job. He is part time, getting like 16-24 hours a weeks, and to top it off... he only gets paid every two weeks. Which personally SUCKS! It is making it real hard on us because now we are cutting corners in every way to try to make my pay check last until the next week. To make matter 100 times worse, his first week there they didn't process his infomation on time. So he didn't get paid for almost 4 weeks. THAT SUCKED BIG TIME!!!! So it has come down to he either needs to get a new job, again, or he needs to get a second part-time job. Trust me, I am not going and getting another job, did that once while going to school full time. Yeah, that sucked at well. I was going to school full time and working over 40 hours a weeks. NOT COOL!

Okay something postive.... my family is growing. The other week my fishy Magnum got some new friends to play with, plus better living quarters. He moved from a 2.5 gallon tank to a 20 gallon tank. He was by himself for a couple of days and then the new house mates moved in. He now has four new friends to chase around. I got two neon tetras, a harliquin rasbora, and a platy. Everyone says that male Bettas (which is what magnum is) are really agressive. But to my delight, Magnum has only chased the Rasbora and the Platy around the tank. He doesn't try to bite them or harm them, he just plays chase. Most of the time he spends either playing in the new bell that is at the bottom of the tank, or he guards the stream of water that comes out of the filter. He gets totally pissed off if any of the other fish come near the filter. He chases them to the other side of the tank and then goes back to guarding. But yeah, no one is missing any parts to fins or tails. So yeah, so far so good.

Michelle is so much closer to coming home. I am so happy about that. Man, do i miss her. I am not just saying this because i know that she will read it. I miss her a lot. I miss our late night girl talk sessions. When we used to stay up late at night (we shared a room for well, all our lives until Amber moved out, so that would be 14 or so years) and get yelled at by mom because we would be talking to loud, laughing to loud, or just being generally annoying. So yeah she is like 90-something days from being home. It is a great relief for me. I was used to her being over there and then she had an accident in April. WOW, every sense then i have been in a panic. My only prayer is that she focuses on her job now and not the fact that she is coming home. I just want her to get her job done, get it done right and get home safe. I don't want her doing her job but focusing more on coming home and then making a mistake that could get her in major trouble. She just needs to stay focused on her job and then in her spare time she can think about coming home. There is alot more that i am going to post about later on my sister because there is some stuff that I think i need to say about her and about us and everything, and that is going to be a long and emotional post. Look forward to that tomorrow.

As for my dad and his busted up arm. It is healing nicely. For those of you who don't know, on Memorial Day my dad had a little accident with a mini-bike and broke his shoulder blande and his collar bone on his right arm. I didn't post anything about it on here because Michelle had to be notified first. Trust me when Michelle found out about it she made sure he was okay and then basically called him and idiot. How it happened was, he was selling the mini-bike, decided to take it for a spin, the "for sale" sign started to slip off, he tried to grab it, lost control and...well screwed up his arm pretty bad. 12-weeks of healing!!! Or driving my mom nuts, which ever way you want to look at it. Anyways, now he barely wears the sling anymore. He goes to the doctors on the 3rd of August. So pray that we get good news then. He went to Kings Island on Thursday the 21st with mom, michelle's boyfriend Tony, my husband Dev, and myself. I got free tickets from work! YEAH! But yeah, he went and had fun and his arm really didn't bother him that much. He didn't ride very many rides. Just White Water Canyon (twice) and then him and mom hung out at the water park later in the day while Dev, Tony and I walked around. So yeah, he is doing better and I can't wait until he can do stuff on his own. As i am sure my mom is looking forward to as well. A point in time where my mom will not have to cut his food, give him a bath, or listen to him whine to get him stuff. He uses his arm as a reason to not have to do anything for himself sometimes I think!

I can't think of anything else at the moment. As for me, i had the last two days off. Didn't do much. Just birthday shopping for my older sister and my nieces birthday presents, as well as my mom's b-day present. My older sister turns 25 on the 1st of August. My niece will be 4 on the 10th of August (having her b-day party on the 6th) and my mom's b-day is on the 29th of August (I will not say how old she will be, i mean how young she will be. For fear that if she reads this...well, you would only be hearing from Michelle if i posted my mom's age on here). I love my mom!

So that is all from the Shah/Pfister front. I will post more tomorrow! As I am sure i will have lots to say. So yeah, get ready for another lengthy post! SORRY! Until next time...

God bless and take care!

~April~
~Philemon 6~

This is funny

Okay,
I ran across this in my email and i thought i would share it with all of you.

The most effective form of birth control

Okay, it is funny to me but i am sure the men out there are guarding their "junk" after seeing this! Oh, I needed a good laugh today. Call me demented if you will but this is hilarious! i will update later. Much to talk about since i have been lazy on the posting!

~April~

Just letting you know...

Michelle has my user name and password so she will know be getting on here and blogging sometimes. when she can. when she isn't busy playing in the sand! Cuz that is all she does is build sand castles all day! (Just joking)

~April~

aprils sister

hi my name is michelle pfister i am aprils little sister who is currently deployed in iraq. things are going good here and my time here is almost over. i asked april if i could post something on her site and she told me that people might think that it is cool to hear something from over here. these past couple of months have been really difficult with the lose of a close friend, spc gavin james colburn, and of course being by his side when he died, actually being in the same truck with him and watching him die in my lap. anyways i just thought i would let the people that my sister talk to know that i am alright and that i will be on my way home within the next 100 days. i cant wait to come home and see my family and friends its been a long time. well got to go and get back to work. just thought that i would also let people know that this 130 degree tempuratures really suck. anyways have a nice day i will keep everyone posted on my coming home.

Happy Birthday

Just wanted to send a quick Happy Birthday shout-out to Mustang 23, who is now in the double digits of days left until he is home! Congrats on both occasions! I got to get ready to go to work!

Tragedy in London

Yesterday terrorists tried to attack the British. I have one thing to say to them... "Didn't you learn anything from September 11th?" You freaking idiots. None of us are going to stand back and let you bully us... we just take care of the situation. I just can't believe that this happened to the British people. They are handling it extremely well, i think. It just pisses me off that terrorists think that they can just go around bombing public transportation, killing innocent people, and nothing will come of this. All I can say is Remember September 11th? Yeah, you will pay for this as well.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair had this to say:

When they try to intimidate us, we will not be intimidated. When they seek to change our country or our way of life by these methods, we will not be changed. When they try to divide our people or weaken our resolve, we will not be divided and our resolve will hold firm. We will show, by our spirit and dignity, and by our quiet but true strength that there is in the British people, that our values will long outlast theirs. The purpose of terrorism is just that, it is to terrorise people, and we will not be terrorised.

I don't think anyone could have said it better. Terriorists are just a bunch of bullies. And does anyone remember what happened to the bully in elementary/high school? Yeah, he eventually met his match. I think that by picking on the British, terriorism has finally met it's match. In the words of Mustang 23.

The Brits are strong people.

I stand with them, just as they have stood with us

A quick note: I may have to come back and edit this post later. Right now I am letting my emotions speak too much. So if you read this, please don't leave nasty comments about anything. I will more than likely come back and re-write this post when i have a chance to sit down and actually think clearly about this situation. But right now I am getting ready for a four day weekend. NO WORK FOR THE NEXT FOUR DAYS!!! i got a lot of packing to do because i am going camping. See you all Monday!