Meet Erik

First of all I must apologize. For those of you who know Erik (the adult one) this was the only digital picture I could find. This one was taken outside the temple at our wedding. The real one of us posing has gone missing and I don't have any others so........if any of you reading this have a digital photo of Erik please let me know, I would love to have copies.

All right to the good stuff....

This man if you had the chance to meet him is the most genuine, kind, and caring people you have ever met. I feel blessed that he was such a huge part of Lindsay's life to have had such great influence. Erik and Lindsay were best friends and grew up down the street from each other. There are lots of stories of eating pizzas, turning on a microwave for 5 minutes at a time through an entire night to make sure they woke up for a paper route they were covering, pink helmets and rollerblades, too many to mention.

Erik and Linds pretty much shared everything, well actually Erik shared everything with Lindsay. When Erik went to college he even let Lindsay drive his truck until he left for his mission. Erik was the best type of friend you could ever want. Erik did not share all the same beliefs that Lindsay and I do and was not LDS but would stand up for Lindsay anytime. He respected Lindsay and even helped make right choices when Lindsay was tempted to do otherwise, even though it was not against Erik's beliefs-pretty amazing huh? I only had the opportunity to meet this fine creature twice. Once when Lindsay and I were engaged (Erik was actually supposed to be a part of Lindsay's proposal but Linds couldn't wait for Erik to get into town and did it earlier) we all went rock climbing and then again at our wedding.

Lindsay and I were married in the LDS temple in Spokane Washington and even though couldn't attend the ceremony he still came out to the temple and waited in the waiting room and was right there when we came out. He is near and dear to our hearts.

Ever since we got married we always wanted to name our first boy after Lindsay's best friend. But it became even more special when a year after Lindsay and I were married Erik went missing and was never found. He was a very adventurous man - remember Lindsay and him are just alike, and he got his pilot's license young (18 or 19), he went to college and then was a bush pilot in Alaska during the summers working super hard and then he would travel the world the rest of the year making it by however he could. He was working his last day in Alaska and getting ready for his fun season when he was on his way back with a fishing group, some storm came through and Erik's plane never landed. They never found any parts of his plane or passengers on land or in the sea. It was heartbreaking to say the least. Lindsay wanted so bad to fly up there as soon as we got the call to help with search efforts but we just couldn't make it work. I felt helpless. We prayed for him and his family.

And now we have this little man to help remember dear Erik James- we even kept his middle name the same. Our little guy has traveled parts of the world and is very mellow like his adult namesake. What a blessing to have both touch our lives. Even though I didn't know Erik as well as Linds, I feel like he has blessed our lives in more ways than I could describe, he is the epitome of a friend. I hope that we can raise our Erik to be the same.