The "Birthday Trip"

Every year Doug and I try to get away for a weekend for our birthday. Since mine is in August and his is in September, we go around this time of year. This year we went to Mt. Carmel. It is where the road from Zion park meets up with Hwy. 89 and there are a couple of motels and restaurants there. There is a golf course also (although we don't play golf) and we thought a lot about how much Ben would enjoy spending a weekend there. (with Tasha of course). We went to church in Alton, which is about 20 miles north of where we were. We drove some dirt roads that we hadn't driven before and just generally relaxed. We weren't in a hurry, and had no set plans for 3 whole days! I could get used to that.

When I got home I got busy again. Lin's had chicken breasts on sale for 1.29 so I bought 40 lbs! I know, pretty weird, but my good friend Penny had told me how much cheaper it is to bottle your own chicken when it is on sale instead of buying it canned. I froze 10 lbs. and bottled the rest. I got 27 pints out of that 30 lbs. of chicken. That was $1.43 per bottle and they are bigger than what you get in the cans. If it sounds like I'm bragging, oh well. I was suprised how easy it was to do. Somewhat time consuming, but once you know the drill on how to do it, you can squeeze other chores around filling bottles and checking the pressure cooker gauge. I was so proud of myself that I tried to bottle beans next. I heard you could do it by just putting the dry beans and water in a jar and then pressure canning it. They turned out good, except that I haven't opened a bottle yet to see how they taste. The chicken I opened and made a chicken salad out of and it was great. This next week we go to get apples in New Harmony. Laura says she wants to do 60 quarts! I can't believe I used to do that! It has been three years since we have been able to get apples from up there. They have been frozen all the other years.

Here are a couple of pictures. One from our trip and one of Cohen's birthday party .