Library Cats and Gingerbread

What do those things have in common? Nothing really, but I was stumped for a catchy title.

Phoebe picked a new menu from Vegan Lunchbox, and it the key items were Coconut Carrot Rice Pudding and Molasses Gingerbread Cake. She gave the pudding a big thumbs-up, and we sampled some of the cake for dinner that day--yummy! I substituted gluten-free flours and it came out perfect.

Coconut Carrot Rice Pudding

Molasses Gingerbread with Soyatoo Whipped Cream

Instead of starting the next Harry Potter like I thought we would, Phoebe wanted to read Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World. There is a children's version of the book, but I thought it was too young for Phoebe, so we are reading the straight-up adult version--I just gloss over the sections that don't really pertain to Dewey and wouldn't interest an eight-year old--like the author's alcoholic husband and the 1980s farm crisis. While relevant to the big picture, Phoebe starts to tune out when we get too far into those parts.

We even found some video of Dewey on YouTube, so she got to seem him in action. I have warned her that this is Dewey's life story, and that life will come to an end before the book is over, so we'll see how it goes when we get there.

Hopefully we can finish Dewey before we leave for DC next week. Would like to only have to bring one book--as we would probably finish it on the trip if not before. Maybe we'll just leave it home and finish it when we get back.

Phoebe's OVA group took First Place in their division, so there were a lot of happy Taylor School kids that afternoon! This past Monday was Phoebe's class play on the American Revolution--she played Betsy Ross and had just about all her lines down cold.

Apparently, I haven't posted about Phoebe's solo reading in quite some time. After Wolf at the Window, she read Saving Zasha, about a Russian boy's attempt to keep his German Shepherd from being killed after WWII--when anything associated with Germany was seen as evil in Russia. We had to explain a bit of the history, but she did OK with it. Now she is reading Chasing Blue, the second book in the Canterwood Crest series.

Phoebe's school doesn't require summer reading, but she's going to encounter it sooner or later, so I decided to create a list for her on my own. We'll see how that goes!