Fast Forward

Today we got some really good news that lifted a weight off of my shoulders.

When we started out on the home school journey, we were just going to get our son caught up then send him back into school. 
That was fourth grade. 
We ended up loving it and wanted to home school both of the kids until 12th grade.
Picking curriculum is half of the work done as a home school parent.  The legs of your school.

(chicken photos are just to give you something to look at.)

Fast forward to 9th grade.
The distance schooling we tried just didn't happen for a few reasons.
We tried to put son into public school, but were too late.
Son busted out the credits we were told he needed to get into 10th grade with not much problem.

Fast forward to end of 9th grade.
The high school is still giving us a hard time.
Long story short...he had two choices, go into high school as a 10th grader who will be behind and would have to take extra classes that cost pretty big $$.   Or go in as a 9th grader and be ahead.
There was just no going around it.  They don't do things like they used to.  I felt like this chick.

(look at those claws, talons...not to cool when we get scratched now.)

Today son got into an alternative school with NO problems!!!
There is normally a waiting list for this school.
No waiting.
No begging.
No rearranging schedules.
NO 9th grade!!
No cost!
Now we are getting somewhere.

(SOOO hard to get a still shot of these gals.)

This school is small and really works one on one with the students.
He will get caught up.
There's no drama at this school either!

This retired home school mom is so relieved to have her son be able to get things straightened out.

Coop De'Ville or Coop De'Redneck

We bought a used coop with run a couple of weekends ago from some very great people, I mean super nice.  Since we had to dismantle it anyway we figured we'd make our own out of the pieces.  Plus we were able to use up some of the pieces in our yard.

Here's the old:

Here's ours this far:

 Please excuse the mess...we are still in construction mode.  It has taken us about 24+ hours to get this far.  That's just counting since we brought it home.  Taking off the chicken wire, the screw, nails, etc...

We cut the old nesting box in half.  We will be putting the other half on top of these three.  Under the boxes we will put their food and water.  There will also be a ramp from the ground to the boxes on the left.  For now our coop is open.  It is so hot here that we wanted to give them as much air as possible.  We'll play winter by ear.

Resting on the chair is the perch which will go along the back side.  The chair...well, I put the chicks in the coop and watch them.

The top is all from the old coop.  We left the siding over hang to give the hens more shade.

There are a few more areas we need to tighten up and staple down.  But for the most part it's just about there.

Oh, the girls...they LOVE being in there future home.  They are already dust bathing, foraging, exploring, etc.  We let them out more than some folks from what I have read, but then again, those folks have hens that are much older who don't dust bathe, etc.

For now we had to upgrade their indoor home to this...

 They are in the office now and love the extra running space.

Flying the coop!  Red is always the first out of the box!  You should've heard the other two inside itching to get out.