Untitled

Last week, my sister in law told me about a friend of hers who was wanting to order from Erik's Rodeo.  She gave me her friend's number and told me to text her the next day.  I sat down at my desk on Friday and was going over what I still needed to do for Erik's Rodeo to get this first batch of shirts ordered and that triggered me to text April's friend.

Turns out, Sara (April's friend) has a daughter that was in Erik's kindergarten class.  She went on to tell me that her daughter talks about Erik all the time and even has some things put up in her closet that remind her of Erik.  I couldn't help but cry my eyes out.  It hurt so bad that I have no recollection of Erik talking about this little girl, but at the same time, it makes me smile because he obviously left an impression on this little girl - who was only 5 years old at the time.  Bittersweet I tell ya.

Anyway, I went digging for Erik's one and only yearbook from school to find out what this little girl looked like.  I found her picture and instantly had images of Erik chasing her around the playground during recess, which only led to more tears. :(

The week before Erik died, they hired a new kindergarten teacher and I elected to have him moved into this new class.  His little "girlfriend" stayed in their original class.

Here's his class picture from the yearbook:

See my sweet boy :) (2nd row of children - listed as "Samuel" instead of "Erik"
This was his last professional picture taken and it's the same one I stare at while I'm working.

I kept flipping through the yearbook and trying to remember those innocent days prior to November 15, 2009 when I came to the last page of his yearbook.  Hello, reality!

The big picture in the middle is the one I was referring to above.

After I cried my eyes out again, I went on to pull out another book that was given to us after Erik died.  A friend of ours, who also happens to be Kyle's ex-girlfriend, teaches in Ware Shoals.  Her class in 2009-2010 had the opportunity to create stories and have them published.

They had to choose someone to dedicate their book to and they chose our family.

I don't really know why I blogged about either of these things other than to have them for my own memory's sake and to be able to look back and remember that my boy LIVED!  And made impressions on tons of people in his 5 short years.

Erik is and will always be my hero.