My Children are getting ready to host a lemonade stand to raise money for pediatric cancer research.  If you are near Lake City, Pa, come by our stand.

 Anyone interested in hosting their own stand can check out Alex's Lemonade Stand

I found 18 keyloggers on the computer my 15 yo uses for his school work.  I can delete them, but he will just download them again.  I know how to block the sites if he uses Internet  Explorer, but he uses Mozilla too.  How do I block them on Mozilla?

Because much of his schooling is online, passwords protecting parent only functions may have been compromised.  I have changed many of my passwords, including access to the computer accounts.  Ds is not allowed on any computer unless he is being watched.  Everyone else has been instructed to log off their accounts or switch users  when no one is in the room, which is a pain because  Dad, 19 yo ds, and I are the only ones who know the passwords for all accounts on all but one computer.

Right now he is only allowed on the computer to do school work that must be done online, and is only on the computer where I am working.

I finally finished my yard work, at least the spring clean up part.  Last fall it snowed before the leaves fell, so I ended up raking and burning leaves all April.  I managed to catch my yard on fire one day.  We also had several branches down due to the early snow and some wind storms.  Dh and the kids can do the mowing.  I can start planting things outside soon.

Our turtle, Ozzy likes being outside during the day.  On warm days we put him outside in the wading pool.  LOL, we have one of those turtle shaped sand box/pools from when the kids were young.  We put the turtle outside in the turtle, LOL.  I bought some fish from the bait store and put them in his pool.  It was fun watching him chase those fish, dinner on the move.  I made certian that the kids knew that the fish were turtle food before I bought them. 

Whewh, has it been busy around here.  Dd planted a dozen pansies and a dozen 4 o'clocks a couple days before Easter.

  Easter was great, we went to my dad's.  I cooked the turkey ahead of time, and dd prepaired some raw veggies.  Oh, I forgot, the church had a bake sale Sat. before Easter, so dd and I baked some bunny cakes.  She used a regular mix with a powdered sugar frosting, and I made friendship bread with a cream cheese frosting.  The cakes were cute (sorry, dh left the camera at work), one of mine looked more like a puppy than a bunny.  We had one of each for the bake sale and one of each for Easter dinner.

Easter was great! After a wonderful, worshipful service at church we picked up my sister and went to Dad's.  Having prepaired most of the dinner ahead of time, we gave the microwave a workout reheating the dinner, better than spending hours in the morning cooking. 

Dad had some Red Skelton videos, Even the kids were fascinated. 

After a couple videos the youngest ds and dd tired of sitting, they played outside for a while, then came in and discovered the piano.  I amazed them when I fixed it for them.  There was a pencil laying on a couple of the hammers. 

We went to Pymatuning lake on the 28th of March for a school field trip.  The ranger taught us about some of the animals that live in the park, took us on a short hike to find some of the animals, then we followed her in our cars to the spillway to feed the carp.  My kids still talk about how the carp sucked up the bread.

That same weekend little Izzy, one of our turtles, died.  I know that turtles bruminate sometimes, so I put her by herself and kept her moist and warm for a week before dd buried her.

There was the PSSA tests.  All three of the kids went for Math and Reading.  We spent many days just doing the Test Ready lessons.

I have been raking and burning leaves for 2 weeks atleast.  I think it will be done in another week if the rain holds off.  The leaves are dry on top, but wet underneath, so they burn slow.  The boro had leaf pickup last fall, but the snow came before my maple trees dropped their leaves.  The heavy snow and some bad wind storms brought down some large branches.  One put a big dent in the cross bar of our swing set.  I managed to catch the yard on fire, luckily the kids and I managed to beat it back to the burn area with water and a rake and shovel.  It's strange that as busy as our street is and as visible as the yard is, being on a corner, that no one else noticed. 

Youngest ds and I planted a bunch more flowers in egg cartons.  We are planning on selling the seedlings at a neighborhood sale coming up next month.  We also want to do Alex's Lemonade Stand at the sale.

Check out the new web alert posted by Pennsylvania Coalition of Charter Schools.

Rep Thaddeus Kirkland Attempting to Close Charter Public Schools

This could affect cyber charter schools as well as b&m charter schools.  Let's not give the government a toe in the door.

Write to the Pa. House Education Committee asking that Rep. Kirkland's bill be removed, or that they vote "no" out of respect for the children, parents, and educators in our public charter schools.

http://votervoice.net/target.aspx?id=pccs:22289602

april 3, 08

Yes

I just got this in my email today.

Thanks for writing; more than 8,500 letters were faxed to all members of the House Education Committee as a result of your efforts. 

Thaddeus Kirkland's odious piece of anti-charter legislation was defeated 17-12.  Notably, minority-committee Chairman Stairs (R-Westmoreland) voted against the bill.  Charter advocate Rep. Sam Rohr spoke eloquently about the negative effects that the legislation would foist on our movement.  Rep Barbara McLlvaine Smith (D-Chester Co.) also spoke against the bill with passion.  Finally, a new voice of support was heard!  Rep. Wheatley (D-Allegheny) broke with Rep. Kirkland and voted against the bill.

Again, thank you for your quick response.  Your involvement is always the key to success.

Regards,

Tim Daniels
Ex. Director, PCCS