Joan Ellen Cornell

Alex playing with a new toy

Oh Jam Cruise. Oh how depressed I am to not be getting onto that ship in 2 weeks :( It didn't really hit me until the other day that we're not going again, and it hit me HARD. Now every day I think about how amazing of a trip that was and am sooo sad we aren't doing it again. I even remember afterwards last year saying to everyone, "once you go on Jam Cruise, I don't understand how you couldn't go again and again." Hands down BEST TRIP I'VE EVER BEEN ON. Nothing beats a 5 day cruise full of amazing musical artists and groups. NOTHING. It's such an intimate vacation. You are essentially "stuck" on a giant ship full of amazing friends and artists whom you brush shoulders with all the time...what an experience! Here are a couple videos I found on YouTube, and some pics I took during the journey :)

A ton of people on the ship decorate their doors, and there's a contest for the best one :) If you've been on a cruise before, you might understand how boring it is walking down the looooong hallways that are so long and all look exactly the same. Well, when all of the doors are decorated, it's way more fun :) I even found myself going out of my way, as in, up or down a floor or two, to walk to my room or to the next show...just to check out new doors. Luckily, I got a heads up about this door business before I left for the cruise, so I took a trip to the store and packed my art supplies in my suitcase. I found foam under-the-sea stickers and colored paper and tried to make my door look like the bottom of the ocean. I also had florescent pipe cleaners which I used to spell out Jamcruise with, and magnetic letters. Those letters were the most awesome idea EVER. Every time we returned to our room there would be different things written, and some were pretty hilarious :) No pics of our room on here, but it was BOMB. We had a balcony in which we could go outside whenever we wanted. Right after I finished decorating my door, I was out on the balcony decorating that and the people in the next cabin over were outside on their balcony too. One of the guys sitting there was like "Hey, your door looks awesome, good job!"...yeah, he turned out to be Kyle Hollingsworth from String Cheese Incident. Well shooooooot yeah :) Even though I didn't win the contest (I think someone who used like, tons of lights and electricity won), Kyle liked my door, so really I'm a winner in my eyes :)

Railroad Earth playing in one of the indoor theaters.

One of the most awesome parts about this trip (for me anyways), was that going into the whole thing, we really didn't know many people on the ship. I loved that, for the fact that we ended up meeting awesome new friends (whom we have met up with and hung out with many times in the past year since the trip!).

Jeremy with some new friends from Nebraska! We met Chad (very right side of pic), at the pre Jam Cruise STS9 show in Fort Lauderdale the night before we set sail. The other guys are friends of his, who we ended up getting to know really well and hung out with the whole time. Such awesome amazing friends! We get to see Chad and stay at his house tomorrow night on our way to IL! And Blaze and Bones (3rd and 4th in the pic), moved to Fort Collins, CO (an hour from us) not long after Jam Cruise last year, and we see them pretty often :)

The guy drinking the beer...yeah, he's the bass player from Lotus :) Whoopwhoop!

And the blond girl on the right of me, that's Jordan. She was a friend of Chad's too...great times :)

Sunrise one of the mornings on the ship. Yeah, we were still awake for it every morning :) One morning, we were supposed to be pulling into the Cayman Islands at 9:30am and Jeremy and I ended up falling asleep on the upper deck about an hour before we ported...we even saw the Islands from afar before we fell asleep. Needless to say, we ended up getting really sunburnt and didn't even get off the ship onto the Islands, haha. Ooooops.

A couple of the concerts at night time. There is nothing better than dancing to an amazing band while being in the middle of the ocean...literally seeing it on every single side of you. Shoot yeah.

Our huge ship :)

Mint Chocolate Thumbprint Cookies

Ingredients:

2 Ounces Dark Chocolate

2 Ounces Mint Chocolate (I used Mint Truffle Hershey Kisses)

1 1/2 Cup Flour

1/2 Cup Dark Unsweetened Cocoa Powder

3/4 Teaspoon Salt

1 Cup Unsalted Butter, cut into 1 inch cubes, room temperature

1/2 Cup Granulated Sugar

2 Tablespoons Dark Brown Sugar

2 Large Egg Yolks

1 Teaspoon Vanilla Extract

1 Cup Coarse Sugar for rolling

3 Ounces White Chocolate, coarsely chopped

3 Tablespoons Heavy Cream

1/2 Teaspoon Pure Peppermint Extract

Makes 25-30 Cookies. I doubled the recipe and made twice that.

Instructions:

1. Melt the dark chocolate and the mint chocolate together in a microwave or over a double boiler. Whisk until smooth, then set aside to cool.

2. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, cocoa powder, and salt. Set aside.

3. In the bowl of a standing mixer fitted with the paddle attachment (make sure you use a standing mixer, a handheld one will not be able to mix the dough because it ends up VERY thick!) , beat the butter until creamy. Add the granulated and brown sugars and beat on medium-high speed until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add the egg yolks and vanilla and beat again until combined. Scrape the chocolate into the mixer and beat just until incorporated. Scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl and add the flour mixture all at once. Beat on low speed, scraping the side of the bowl occasionally, until the dough is smooth.

4. Transfer it to a sheet of plastic wrap and pat it into a disk; wrap and refrigerate it until it is chilled and firm, at least 30 minutes.

Note: May be made ahead of time and refrigerated up to 24 hours.

5. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F and grease 2 baking sheets.

6. Pour the coarse sugar into a shallow bowl, and with clean hands, form tablespoon size dough balls, taking care that they have no lumps or cracks. Roll each ball in the coarse sugar and place it on a prepared baking sheet. Use your thumb or a small dowel (I used the end of a whisk) to make an indentation in the center of the cookie.

7. Bake for 10 minutes, remove the sheet from the oven, and use your thumb or the dowel to make the indentation more visible. Return the sheets to the oven and bake for another 4-5 minutes. (These are the type of cookies that can overbake very quickly- pull them out at the first signs of cracking.)

8. Set the baking sheets on a wire rack to cool for 5 minutes. Use a spatula to transfer the cookies to the rack to cool completely before filling them.

9. Place the white chocolate in a glass measuring cup with a pour spout. Put the cream in a microwave-safe bowl or cup and microwave it on high power until it boils, about 40 seconds. Pour the hot cream over the white chocolate and let stand for 30 seconds, then whisk until smooth. Stir in the peppermint extract. Fill the thumbprint cookies with the white chocolate ganache and refrigerate them until set, about 30 minutes.

GOOD STUFF! They aren't very sweet cookies, but good :) And they look awesome!

Some pictures from the Cookie Exchange-

The best band in the whole world...singing my favorite song in the whole world :)

I can't tell one from the other...did I find you or you find me? (best song lyric ever, EVER)

Happy Saturday night :)

I spent a lot of today making cookies for another cookie exchange party tomorrow. They turned out great...I'll post pics and the recipe and step by step instructions tomorrow...too lazy tonight, haha.

Jeremy left to go to Vail for the night to see Michael Menert play tonight and to snowboard tomorrow. Boo. I kinda wish I would have gone now that i'm sitting here bored as heck.

I'm gonna be 23 weeks tomorrow. I can't believe how fast time has gone so far! It feels like only yesterday I was like, 11 weeks. Crazy. This baby's gonna be here before we know it!!

I've been watching the one-a-day websites (babysteals.com, babyhalfoff.com and greenbabybargains.com) and today on babyhalfoff they were selling Woombie's Swaddlers for 50% off, so I I got one :) It was something that I knew I was going to get eventually, so I figured I might as well get it for way cheaper. Shoot yeah.

The snow I mentioned the other day melted real quick, but this is what I woke up to today :)