chickens, part four: the coop

One of the things I have come to know about my husband is that he can pretty much figure out how to do anything he wants to. So when he said he was going to start building the chicken coop one Saturday and then proceeded to design and draw a plan, figure out and purchase materials, and get to work I was not surprised. Pretty sure he didn't even do internet research for this one-- just came right out of his brain. [Edit: John read this and informed me that I was too generous with my praise here because he had gone over to a neighbor's house and looked at their coop to give him some ideas for ours. So I guess the idea wasn't completely out of his brain, but the rest was :).] My life would be so much less exciting without him around :). Here are some photos of our coop building journey.

Try not to be alarmed that our children are playing so closely to the deadly power tools. We obviously aren't :).


This is the position that George would assume every time John used the saw. He didn't like how loud it was. Pearl, as you can see, was not fazed in the least.


This is where we put Pearl when we need her out of the way for a little while. She likes it.


Until her brother decides to join her.


She is a little walker these days. She can walk across rooms and down halls, but she still probably crawls about 70% of the time. It's faster.


I love Pearl's little outstretched arms to her daddy. She reaches for him constantly and one of my most favorite things about him is that he always wants her back. He adores his baby girl.


This was from a different day out working on the coop. These pictures are supposed to be switched-- the sequence was her coming up and grabbing onto him, him looking over at her,


then her leaning in to plant a kiss on his lips, followed by her turning around to go about her business.


"Her business," meaning: surveying the scene from her tractor, and getting busy with the tape measure.


And smiling slyly.


She was also pretty helpful with the chicken wire :). And there is a peek of the coop up to that point. The chickens looove it.




This is the best photo I have of it while it was still under construction, but I need to get a new one. It is all done now, complete with a galvanized metal roof and dark brown stain (which we thought was a disaster at first but has grown on us).


And to finish our chicken posts off, here are the last two photos that show our immersion in all things chicken. In my class at school we had the students make these little chicks out of yellow paper plates and their handprints and George really wanted to make one. We didn't have yellow plates, but painting was more fun for him anyway.


Pretty happy about the sneeze I caught in this last picture :).


Now I can blog about regular life again! I have much to do.