Friday Fave Five, April 30th

Here we are again. It's Friday! And it's time for (insert drum roll) Friday Fave Five hosted by the lovely and gracious Susanne!  Go on over to Living To Tell The Story and check in with our constantly growing group of thankful people.

Wow, what a week it has been at Willow's Cottage!  I am not sure I can limit myself to only five favorites. (I also am not sure that I will be able to upload any photos today since I updated blogger and may have difficulties with new formats.)  But first I want to say that whenever I have one of THOSE weekends when I don't get around to visit everyone, I always feel sad. I really do make an effort to visit everyone who links to Susanne's FFF, but I missed out last weekend because, well, because:

1.  The Professor and I spent all day on Saturday at UCLA.  Yes, that big magnificent university in Westwood, Los Angeles.  The LA Times hosted its annual Festival of Books with UCLA and on the university campus.  Because Chaplain Dan was on call, The Princess came with her parents and a friend, and the six of us attended interesting and stimulating lectures by many different authors, grabbed lunch with thousands of our best friends, toured the book stalls and finally stood in line for a half hour to sample the world's best ice cream sandwiches at that locally famous Diddy Riese's.

Amazingly, I didn't purchase a single literary volume, although I was certainly tempted by Captain Richard Phillips' account of his time spent as a hostage of Somali pirates after I heard him speak at one of the lectures.

2.  The local hospice hosted a Garden Tour on Sunday. We thoroughly enjoyed our three hours of walking through five gardens.  Especially meaningful was the third garden--a home grown backyard garden belonging to our close friends T and D.  I'm hoping to post more photos of the gardens over the weekend (once I figure out blogger).

3.  Years ago, an Indian neighbor taught me to make kefir/yogurt.  I made my own yogurt until we moved to an Asian country where it was impossible to procure fresh milk.  Then I just never got back into the habit of preparing my own yogurt.  Why would I, when Trader Joe's carries such marvelous Greek yogurt?  After I received my dehydrator birthday present last month, I noticed that the owner's manual gave directions on how to make yogurt.  So. I made Greek yogurt this week!  Yummy!

4.  Knowing that my two girls are great friends who love and support each other makes this mother's heart happy.  MamaMia spent last week helping Kiti and The New Boy move to a larger apartment.  You may think, O how nice. But really, it's a major accomplishment considering that it takes MM as many hours of travel as it does me to get to Kiti's city and state.  I love seeing how my kids love each other and sacrifice to help their siblings.

5.  Speaking of kids, the two male siblings each called his mother on the same afternoon, just to check in and say hi.  Yep, Mom's heart was bursting with happiness!

6.  Oh, and speaking of the dehydrator (see #3), I received a book called The Dehydrator Cookbook from a blog friend who found out I had  a new dehydrator and had never used one before.  Thanks, Kathie!

I need to stop here at five, umm, six faves. But Willow's Week was so full of blessings!  How was your week?