Battles which ones to fight and which ones to let slide

Our daughter is a senior.  A very smart senior, she is in the top 10% of her graduating class.  A very unconventional senior.  A senior who does not care about social expectations as much as most do.

Colorado State law has no attendance laws for students over the age of 17.  It's a problem.  Seniors are bored and don't want to attend and there is nothing regarding actual graduation that the school can do to force them to attend.  Our school has compensated by requiring all seniors to attend at least 80% of their classes to be able to walk at graduation.  For most, this would be the perfect solution.  Not with McKenzie though.  This daughter of mine couldn't care less about the social expectation of walking at graduation.  She went to Jordan's graduation two years ago and was bored out of her mind.

Last semester McKenzie had 100 class absences out of 400 class periods total.  Last semester McKenzie received a 4.0 gpa while still missing these 100 class periods.  I received an email stating that my student was at risk for not being able to walk at the graduation ceremony.  This semester McKenzie had the goal of missing about the same amount of class periods, actually just a little less because she is at 75% attendance currently and because her friends really want her to walk with them.  She had that goal until recently when she emailed the counselors to ask for some schedule changes and they denied them.  Then she texted me the following:

And she is dead serious.  What to do as a parent?  That is the question.  Well, I emailed the principle and said to him that it's probably time for he and I to meet regarding McKenzie's attendance.  Brad and I had a discussion with McKenzie about when to pick a fight and when not to.  I also spoke with Colorado Virtual Academy in case I have to transfer schools to help her finish.  However, that being said, I am 90% confident that Mckenzie can miss 200 classes and still get a 4.0 and 100% confident  she can miss 200 classes and get passing grades and graduate.  She just won't walk...and she doesn't care.  *sigh*

What else do we do as parents?  We take her out to breakfast when we are home and she is skipping.  That seems like the right thing to do...reward her.

 I should have had her graduate early.  My mistake.  My boys are so much easier than this girl.  School attendance seems like it has been a battle since day 1.

As for the rest of the week....

We got the tractor back up and running.

We've been fighting illnesses (at least Riley and Brad have):

We dressed up as rockers for our town winter festival:

Oh wait, we didn't.  That was Kenzie's friend Anna.  She did.  She is supposed to be dressed up as Twisted Sister but I say it's more of an Axl Rose look.  We've never attended our town's winter festival.

We did make homemade donuts though:

Oh, and we celebrated this little guy's birthday!  Happy birthday Jake!