March 16, 2025

Wowzers what a crazy couple weeks it has been! Our son and daughter were in a regional competition for school and we all got the WORST stomach bug which took us out of commission for almost a full week so that was pretty terrible. 

On the GOOD NEWS side of things though we have been auditioning new guitarists and drummers and FINALLY decided on two guys to move forward with! Tanner Goodman will be playing guitar and/or bass for us and Derek Dennie will be our new drummer now that our bro-in-law Sam and his family have moved to Virginia. So just a little bit of a lineup change here, but we are SO excited to be continuing to move forward!

Last weekend I went to a rock show of one of my all-time favorite bands called “Copeland”. They are a smaller band so they were not the headliner, because of this their set was just NOT LONG ENOUGH. This was their 20th anniversary tour though of their “In Motion” album which I first discovered them with back during freshman year of college. Their music has underscored my entire adult life. It was amazing to FINALLY see them live as I have never seen them before in concert. I was almost in tears on a couple of their songs. I was front and center too. On one of the songs I was singing his backup vocals from the crowd which were not being performed by anyone on stage so it was funny because he HEARD ME singing them and looked around to figure out who was singing them lol! Then we locked eyes and he gave me a nod haha. Felt good :) All in all, this concert only reinvigorated my spirits for our live shows that we’re preparing to continue to put on with our new bandmates!

This week I was in the studio editing Sarah’s vocals and tuning them. You can watch that episode here. I still haven’t completely finished them on our song “Agree” yet, but as soon as I do, I’ll be hopping on recording my own vocals with duet with hers. I’m really excited for that part. I love getting to sing with Sarah. Her voice adds so much depth to my songs, especially when we get to duet on them. 

As far as date nights the last couple weeks (maybe I should start calling these Studio/Date Night Journals? Haha). We had a bike riding date where we rode around town, hit up a pizza place for dinner and bought some Girl Scout cookies off the street corner. Found a new yoga studio that I’d like to try out! Well, new to me… apparently it’s been around in town for years. I’ve driven by this place dozens of times not knowing what it was but since we were on bikes it was easier for us to ride up to it and check it out in person. One of my goals this year is to attend a group yoga class and group meditation class. I’ve gotten into yoga on my own in the privacy of my own home/bedroom haha, over the last 7 years or so. I’ve enjoyed learning all sorts of different yoga positions and have found that it has helped me a lot. I’ve always been too embarrassed to do it with other people though so it’s time to get over that! 

Our date night this LAST week was actually SUPER cool and creative. I guess it’s called “pass the picture”? Our daughter told us she saw it on YouTube when she saw what we were doing (she was supposed to be upstairs in bed, the little rascal lol) Anyway, I guess it’s been a trending date night activity. Basically we sit on either side of a divider so we can’t see what the other is working on, and each of us have a painting canvas and we just start painting! We set a timer for 4-5 minutes and when the timer rings, we swap paintings and keep working on whatever we think the other person started painting. We keep swapping like this every 4-5 minutes until each of our paintings are done! We’ll be posting a video of this in the Future Sphere Discord server so check it out there. It was a ton of fun because at first I didn’t know what I was painting, I just started putting paint on the canvas. Then when we first swapped Sarah turned it sideways and started making what I thought looked like an ocean, then all the sudden my blob I had started looked like a crane! For Sarah’s she initially started painting giant butterflies, but when I got it for the first time I thought she was going for flowers so I started making them into flowers lol! She later added smaller butterflies, but this was sooooo fun! We def want to do it again sometime.

Anyway that’s all for this week! Stay tuned for the next vlog episode where I’ll be recording my vocals AND stay tuned to more inside stuff with our new guitarist and drummer!

(Pics below!)

/n8

“Fenwick & the Futures”