Happy Third of July

Benjamin had the day off today, and he let me sleep in this morning so it felt like a day off for me too. :) We went to the Chick-fil-A in Shrewsbury, then to the ranch to see Zoe. Unfortunately Zoe was busy and we left not long after arriving. Benjamin was feeling pretty heartbroken over Zoe suddenly being a busy teenager. We stopped at Joann's on the way home and got some things I need for some bedding I'm working on. We came home, and soon after Ian and Anna showed up. Ian and Anna got in some kind of discussion about Ian not having any money. I told Ian I'd pay him $10 if he got rid of the giant groundhog that lives under our shed and thinks he owns our yard. Ian then spent about two hours trying to get the groundhog. He wanted to shoot it "with a 22 or something", but without a spare 22 on hand, he settled for trying to drop a cinder block on it. Anna picked some berries in the woods.
The above picture is clearly posed. Below you can see what I actually saw when I came out of the house to see what they were up to:
So I guess he never had an oppurtunity to actually try to drop the cinder block, because he then asked for some duct tape and permission to drill some holes in the shed. After discussing quantity and diameter of the holes, I gave him permission, and this is what he did:
The above trap involves a cut off spindle from the old stair rail, a wooden block, lots of duct tape, a wire clotheline, and I guess there must be two screws in there somewhere. And of course the cinder block. He thought the groundhog would trip the wire on the way out from under the shed and the block would fall. He got all excited when he looked out the kitchen window and saw that the block had fallen a little while later. Turns out the duct tape had just given out. So the groundhog lives on...

Anyway, here is Lily, dressed down for dinner, in her new Ikea high chair:
She likes sitting at the table with us, so not having a tray has been great fun for her. Here she is during dinner tonight:
We had chicken parmesan and she had some vegetable risotto with cheese. Oh, and banana puffs of course. Ian liked the banana puffs as well. There are a lot of things about the above picture that I love- like Benjamin's "Fleetwood Mac Local Crew" tshirt, Ian's face, holding the Puffs, and the way Lily is looking at Ian. She really loves him. Poor girl doesn't stand a chance of being normal.