Canning, Jonas Brothers Concert

Last week, we went to Columbus, OH to see the Jonas Brothers in concert. We meaning, my sister Jamie, my nephew Alex, and my nieces Ilana and Isabel. This is one of the pictures that I took while we were at the concert. Our seats were really high, but they were good because of the way the stage was laid out. It was a lot of fun, but tiring at the same time.

Honor Society opened up for them and they were pretty good. Jordin Sparks was supposed to be next, but since she joined Britney's Circus tour, she couldn't make it. That was a little sad, but ok. The traffic was horrible trying to get out of there. If we go to that arena again, we said we're paying to stay across the street so we can walk!

The hotel that we stayed at upgraded our room to a penthouse and that was exciting for the kids because they have never stayed in a room like that before. The concert came at a time when funding was low, so it was nice that our hotel had a kitchenette in it, so we could make our own food instead of paying to eat out all the time. That was nice.

It was about a six hour drive to Columbus, so it wasn't that bad. We ended up getting there around one and called for an early check in, but couldn't check in to the hotel until two p.m. This is the kids waiting at the hotel to check in. We let them out of the car and they were excited we did. Our room was upstairs and it was really nice.

Not bad for a quick trip before school starts! (Which is Tuesday in Michigan, btw.) When we were leaving all the school kids in Columbus had school the next day. We were like "good thing we're from Michigan!" Hehe. (In an effort, to save on funding, Governor Granholm made it a law or something that all schools start after Labor Day in Michigan.)

Yesterday, mom and I spent the day canning. We got some apples and peaches from our local farm market that we love and made caramel apple butter, apple pie filling, canned peaches and homemade vegetable beef soup. We had some tomatoes to can too, but we just didn't get that far. It was 9 p.m. before we were done and we were tired!

The caramel apple butter turned out really good, but I wouldn't put the cloves in it next time. We made apple pie filling before and it is just great! You just open the jar, stick it in a pie crust or use it for apple crisp and bake it. Wonderful thing and tastes great! I cannot wait for our apple trees to mature so we can get apples from them instead of buying them.

All the while, our soup (or sloup) was cooking. We always can that and chili for the winter. It was really good because most of the vegetables we either canned or froze ourselves. With the exception of the carrots and potatoes. Our carrots and potatoes just didn't do good this year, so we had to buy those. The Dragon Tongue Beans tasted really good in the soup! Yummy! At one point, we had both canners going. We were saying that we needed more stove space. :)

I hope that everyone has a safe and wonderful labor day weekend. I'm not sure what I'll be doing. Mom wants to go to the flea market. I want to go to the craft fair and the drive-in. We'll see what happens. Neither I nor Jamie has to work. If it's nice, maybe we'll grill out.