bWill bStyling.

I’m one for spoiling. I love buying little children clothes. Everytime I see something new I want to buy it. Most the time I can resist the urge, but this weekend I couldn’t resist the urge to buy my little nephew a few things ( mind you they only cost $15 total )

Here’s the first toy I ever got for bWill. I’m thinking bWill won’t be a blankee boy, he’ll be a stuffed animal holder – which is perfect for his mom. My sister ( still to this day ) has her stuffed bear that’s she has had pretty much since birth. Teresa said I can see him dragging it around already.

bWill's Yogi!

Here’s his first pair of booties. Mom, T, and I love SmartWool socks. We fight over which are ours (mine mainly have holes – so I get the raw end of the deal). Now bWill has his first SmartWool socks that his mom, gran and aunt can’t fight over!

SmartWool Booties

Mmm… I love this kid already. Now everytime I see my sister, I give him a kiss

It’s a.

BOY!

Baby Will.

It’s crazy these days… I’m surrounded by tons of people that are having children. My aunt just had another girl (Avery), Kristen is having a boy in a month (along with the rest of the Buckhead Church staff) and most importantly… well you’ll just have to keep on reading.

The age old question around family holidays is asking the young, married couples, “So, when are you all going to get pregnant?” Well this Christmas Eve was no different, Mom’s side of the family (The Williams) love that question. All the older, married couples insist on picking at the young ones about having children. I think it’s because we’ve almost run out of small children in our family. We have a tradition on the Williams side that we open presents in order of age – the the youngest opens one, then the next youngest opens one, and so forth until we start back over. Growing up (at the peak) there were 9 grandchildren, so it was a great time. Everyone would have tons of presents and it would take forever. Nowadays, there’s one grandchild (well technically two now since Avery) and one great-grandchild. It’s a great time, just not the same feel. So the older, married couples want the long, drawn out present opening extravaganza back. Um sorry about the long, crazy side bar… so back to this Christmas Eve, my sister and brother in law were targets for the infamous baby-making question. [At that time, they just celebrated their 4th wedding anniversary (Oct. 23rd) and well in my family, people don't wait - the family is getting restless] My aunt Gena asked Teresa and Andrew, they tried to ignore it, but they turned red in the face. I didn’t think anything of it except that they’re tired of people asking, and it’ll happen when it happens – little did I know they’d already made a baby. Fast forward: On February 19th around 3:00, I got a phone call from my sister telling me that she was pregnant! (to which later she explained why she was red in the face on Christmas Eve cause they were trying) Oh my goodness, I couldn’t believe it. I was sitting in the WL kitchen at Buckhead Church, and I just started crying! I can’t even express how excited I was to hear that my sister will be having a baby in October. Baby Williams (baby Will as I call him/her) due date is the 25th, two days after their 5th wedding anniversary.  I’m ok with sharing my birthday month with my nephew or niece. Only 3 days until we find out if baby Will is a boy or girl. Mom’s betting on a girl, Teresa thinks a boy. I agree with Teresa, but I’m just excited to be an aunt.

Over the past few months, I’ve been getting more and more excited.. thinking more and more about each new milestone that Teresa and the baby are making. Most days I scroll through the list of things I’m excited about for when the baby comes… here’s some… I am excited to hear bWill cry for the first time, to hold bWill for the first time, for our first of many Friday’s together when dad’s got to go to work, to roll over for the first time, to get a boo-boo, to spoil ‘em like rotten in my own way, for the first time they think I’m cooler than their mom, for bWill’s first day of elementary school, to watch bWill play whatever sport they want to, to support bWill in their crazy,childhood dreams, to love bWill like my own, and more importantly I’m excited to see bWill grow up in a home where mom and dad love each other unconditionally, to have them grow up in a church like Buckhead (that I would have died for as a kid), to have them know from day one that they have a heavenly Father that created them, knows the exact number of hairs on their head, that they can never hide from, that will never run from them, that knows all, sees all and loves them for all they are.

Ngaamba, Kenya.

This years support letter explains everything :

Hey Family and friends,

Over the past three summers, I have been incredibly blessed to share God’s love with his people in Romania and China. This summer, God has blessed me with an incredible opportunity to lead a group of high school students to Ngaamba (Gaw-Mba), Kenya.

We will be partnering with an organization called 410 Bridge, which focuses on projects that have been identified as strategic priorities for the community. We will have the opportunity to interact with local leaders, community members, and many children throughout the week. This will be a life-changing week, serving and building relationships with our brothers and sisters in Kenya!

As in the past, I am putting together a support team of my family and friends that will be willing to pray for our team and the people of Ngaamba and potentially give towards this project, or both. We will need prayer for strength and a spirit of love and humility, as well as safe travel. Financially, I need to raise $3400 to cover the cost of travel expenses and the various projects we will be doing while in Ngaamba. I will need to raise all of the support funds by June 1. Checks should be made out to North Point Ministries and sent to the address below or can be made online at https://ssl.northpoint.org/ssl/globalx/giving.html (Country: Kenya, Trip: Kenya High School Trip 7/23/09-8/1/09, Individual: Tatum Eubanks). All donations are tax deductible.

Thank you for your consideration in supporting this project spiritually and/or financially. Please let me know if I can answer any of your questions. Excited about sharing the good news with the people of Ngaamba!

Tatum

(Let me know if you’d like to send me a check, and I will give you my home address.)

Daniel Fast.

some friends and I started the Daniel Fast this past Sunday, so until Easter you can find me here.

the big three.

Last weekends trip to Seattle. Portland. Vancouver. had been booked for about a month and a half (well before the days of Colorado – dipping in the vacation bucket two weekends in a room hit multiple facets of my life hard). The only things we booked were the plane tickets, hotels, rental car, dinner at the Space Needle and a tour of the Campilano Suspension bridge… to the average person that might seem like a lot, but our days were wide open until the week before. So Anna let me do the planning, and I went a little crazy. I searched and searched for fun things to do – I planned as if we were going to be there for a week instead of three days – I was just that excited. Fortunately though we managed to pick some pretty amazing stops…

Here are my favorite three a.k.a. the big three:

1. Mount St. Helen – it was gorgeous.. we didn’t exactly know how far we were going to be able to drive up the road to see it. When knew that at some point the road (we were told mile 36 was the stopping point) was going to be layered with snow (and with Sophia the Kia… well the name says it all) so we didn’t want to push it too far (but went to 38 or 39). Without a doubt, if you ever go out west… go to Mount St. Helen, in the winter time.. please. You will be utterly amazed at God’s majesty. Thanks God for being so creative, I’ll never get tired of your creation.

Our last view of Mount St. Helen:

There were at least 9 inches of fresh untouched powder on top of the snow - we just sank

2. Space Needle / Sky City – I know what it’s like to view a city from an observation deck… it’s gorgeous, breath-taking, a view with seeing, but this was my first time eating at a restaurant that had a view of the city (and it revolved – twice while we ate!). Our reservations were at 5:30 – strategically planned so that we could be there while it was still light outside and to watch the full sunset. It was indescribable. We were able to see Mount Baker, Mount Rainer, the city skyline, the pier, everything! God immensely blessed us with sunshine on the one full day we spent in Seattle. As we road up the elevator in Space Needle, the woman told us that we were there on one of the 100 days out of the year that you can actually see the city (and those days rarely come in the winter – summer is more ideal). Knowing that we had planned the trip over a month in advance not knowing the weather and everything else, it was perfect – thanks God!

oh you know.. there's just a mountain hanging out in the city background

3. Pike Street Public Farmers Market – I could have stayed at the Farmers Market for hours (silly parking meters and few coins)! It was magnificent, without a doubt my favorite part of the trip and what I had been looking forward to the most (which sometimes can be a let down). I just kept thinking, I want to see someone fling some fish around (I had seen it on tv before)… well I definitely got my wish. The fishermen on the pier were so entertaining – mad props! It’s as if they are stage performers, and the market is their stage. I took countless pictures of the fresh flowers, fruit, seafood and other goodies. The set up, scenery, workers and shoppers made the Farmers Market one of a kind. It made me wish I lived in Seattle. I’d love to go back to just spend a day to take more photos.

I wanted to eat everything! so fresh!

The trip was perfect. I have so many new travel memories… and so thankful to have a great friend like Anna to travel with. I’m also excited about staying at home with no travels… well for the next month.

S.P.V.

My fabulous friend Bek educated me on the top 8, bottom 4.

Thought I would use it to give you a little teaser about Seattle. Portland. Vancouver.

Top 8

1. Sophia the Kia – and all 940 miles we put on her

2. Traveling through rain, snow, sleet and sunshine and the amazing pictures of all!

3. Jack in the Box – um, can we get one in the South?!!?

4. Screaming “rrrrrru”, “I will cuuuuut you” and “Suh-cur-ity! Suh-cur-ity!” at night on the streets of every city we visited

5. seeing Mount St. Helens covered in snow – wouldn’t have it any other way

6. the Space Needle (and eating in the needle at Sky City – it revolves!)

7. the beautiful weather in Seattle on the day we spent there! No rain – just blue sky!

8. Pike Street’s Public Farmers Market

Bottom 4

1. Driving down the 101 in the dark (and almost totaling Sophia by hitting some elk as they ran across the road)

2. Getting my first speeding ticket

3. The TPMS (tire pressure monitoring system) light coming on in Sophia – a mile from the Canadian Border

4. no Jack in the Box at the Sea-Tac Airport

here’s some pics to chew on… my faves:

Stanley Park, Vancouver, BC

Public Farmers Market, Seattle, Washington

Capilano Suspension Bridge, North Vancouver, BC

Space Needle, Seattle, Washington

Pilatus (Day 4).

Assuming that ATL wasn’t going to get another crazy March snow storm .. our day to leave Colorado finally came. But not before our tour of the Pilatus (airplanes) compound.

Here’s the background… my friend, Sean, is a pilot for Peachtree-DeKalb airport… more specifically he works for EPPS Aviation which sells Pilatus planes. So occasionally Sean will head out to Colorado to pick up a plane for an EPPS customer. It just so happened to work out that Sean was in Colorado picking up a plane the same time we were skiing (so it was great blessing from God to have Sean out there at the same time).

Sunday afternoon, Sean mentioned that he’d never had a tour of the Pilatus factory. He made a phone call (like he does so often – he loves the phone – dude called everyone he knew to tell them he skied Vail – love you Sean!) and set up a time for us to have a tour. Not going to lie, I wasn’t exactly sure about this whole tour thing – I thought it would be a little boring and all I could think about was going to the University of Colorado bookstore to get a hoodie – hehe. Well at the end of the tour I was thoroughly impressed and had asked a million and one questions – which isn’t like me. The factory is awesome. The planes come there pretty much empty – only the bare essentials to get the plane there (they come all the way from Switzerland – which is where the main plant is). In the Colorado plant, they have three different parts to the factory – paint, avionics and upholstery. I was amazed at the fact that they do everything with their hands.. no machines, no assembly lines, nothing. We walked through a couple of different hangers.. seeing about 8 different planes – all in different stages – some with finished upholstery with no paint or avionics, some painted with partial upholstery and no avionics, you get the picture.

This Pilatus plant will have about 65 planes come through their doors this year. All of which they will pimp out especially for their customers. Crazy!

I left the Pilatus plant thinking someone needs to do a reality show on this company – PIMP MY PLANE!

After we finished our tour reality set in… we grabbed a quick bite to eat on Pearl Street (which brought back so many memories from traveling to Colorado as teenager – it was always part of summer vaca). Then Sean dropped us off to the airport to head back to ATL.

Colorado was an amazing time. I definitely needed time away from the hustle and bustle of everyday life. Time with great friends is priceless and being in another state puts a few more exclamation points to the priceless. Thanks Sean, Yarome, Zach, DJ, Hailey and Jessica for making the trip unbelievable – I am extremely blessed through our friendships. Um – but let’s not go skiing next year

Enjoy the amazing pictures from the Pilatus plant.. (who wants to buy me one of these?)

Ashton Martin with wings

flight deck

Royal Canadian Mounted Police is a Pilatus client

I won't ever be able to afford to sit in this chair again

Boulder (Day 3).

Well it’s go home day.. or so we had planned.

I woke up around 8 to find Zach and DJ sitting at the computer mumbling about flights being canceled. I checked my e-mail and sure enough at 4:58am I got an e-mail from Delta telling me my 1:30pm flight was canceled – what! why! there wasn’t any reason for it to be canceled – yet…. Well Zach’s (who was flying on AirTran) flight wasn’t canceled so we headed to the airport to figure out if his flight was going to be canceled as well (cause at this point it had started snowing in ATL).

Over the course of the next couple of hours.. I returned the car, DJ and I waited in the airport with Zach,  Sean picked us up, we ate lunch at Ted’s Montana Grill, Zach changed his flight to Monday and we went back to the airport to get him.

So now we are all in the car headed to Sean’s hotel (cause he was staying until Tuesday – which meant free place to stay – yah!). We changed clothes cause we were going to take advantage of our extra time in CO and go hiking! We headed up to Flatiron, which was about 20 minutes away in Boulder. It was gorgeous… we hiked for about 45 minutes (maybe an hour) found a great spot and took pictures galore. It was my favorite part of the trip – without a doubt. We made our way down the mountain and headed back to the hotel to get ready for a fun night in Boulder. After we all showered and got ready, we headed to the University of Colorado at Boulder to pick up a friend of Sean’s, Hailey. We ate dinner at an amazing sushi restaurant, Hapa. Best sushi I’ve ever had… and I’ll just say the names of the sushi rolls were interesting. After dinner, we went to a movie – Zach and I saw “He’s just not that into you”, and Sean, DJ and Hailey saw “Slumdog Millionaire” .. I think we all decided we didn’t know which movie was worse.

It was a great unexpected day that we all needed and thoroughly enjoyed!

Pilatus (Day 4) to follow…

Enjoy the pics:

on the way.... the clouds in CO are amazing!

flatiron

amazing!

got to love the artsy pics

the view

um... art... again

sunset

Vail (Day 2).

After A-basin… I wasn’t exactly excited about skiing… my neck was still hurting, I had developed a number of bruises on my ankles from my ski boots, and I was exhausted… I’ll just admit it – bottom line – I didn’t want to fall again, I wanted the slopes to be easy enough for me to not even have to worry about falling…

The four of us (Sean, Zach, DJ and myself) packed in the Camry Saturday morning and made the 30 minute drive to Vail. We got there and decided to eat breakfast before we strapped ourselves to our skis for the day. We ate at the quaint little French place – I had a yummy omelet – thanks for bfast Sean! We went back to the car to get our skis and headed to the slopes. The one good thing about Vail vs. A-basin is the size. Vail is huge – so the masses of people didn’t seem as bad as at A-basin, plus there were tons of green slopes for us to explore. We made our way up the mountain, and it was a blast coming down. Sean did some radical 360’s and managed to stay on his feet (well for the most part – not going to lie I enjoyed watching him fall – like I am sure DJ enjoyed watching me fall the day before). Around lunchtime, Yarome and Jessica showed up, and we all rode the Gondola up part of the mountain. Keep in mind, Yarome (on his snowboard), and Jessica, DJ and Zach (on their skis) are professionals compared to Sean and myself. Sean and I think we can make it down this green slope called “The Lost Boys”. We ride the chair lift the rest of the way up to the top of the mountain (never go to the top of a mountain if you are a beginner – you are bound to have to go down a slope that you don’t think is green!). At the beginning, we were fooled – it was easy.. then we reach the snow mountain equivalent of Stone Mountain. I some how made it down the first part without falling, Sean busts it a couple times – skis flying in the sky – lucky DJ was there to help him. Then we get to the last hill before we are back to the chair lift. This hill scared me cause at the end you have to make a hard right, or you will go off the mountain. I decide I am not taking the chance – so I begin to slowly go down sideways then I start scooting down parallel with the mountain. I make it about three quarters of the way down and all of a sudden I start sliding down the hill… backwards! I stop myself with my hands and my legs/skis decide they want to go in different directions, I was in tears and had to unclip in order to move. I’m pretty sure I strained my right calf in the process – ouch! I decided at that point I was done! Skiing was over, um oh that’s right I’m at the top of the mountain though! We managed to make the probably hour long ski down the mountain, luckily never falling. I happily put my skis in the car and put my other shoes on and headed back to Vail Village. Sean, DJ and I did a little shopping while we were waiting around from Yarome, Zach and Jessica to finish. I got a Colorado flag – which I had been wanting since we arrived in CO – I think it’s my new must have when I travel – I now want a flag from every place I travel (I have an odd obsession with flags – I have quite a few already ). We hopped in the car to head back to Denver in order to catch our flight that was scheduled to leave Sunday afternoon. We’re on Interstate 70, cruising, puttin’ up the hills and flying down the mountains when all of a sudden – red tail lights galore – apparently there was a crash in the tunnel ahead. We sat with the car in park for a good 45 – 1|00. Finally made it back to Denver to our hotel, ordered room service and caught some z’s….

Boulder (Day 3) to come…

Enjoy some pics from Vail:

the greenies

the slopes

the parking lot on I-70