We have the.best.friends. Seriously. I know I’ve said it before, and I’m sure I’ll say it again, but we do, and I can’t shut up about it.

I think I’ve mentioned before that it was very hard for Eric and me to talk about Arie – or maybe I haven’t, my life is one big blur right now…what day is it? – You would think you were heartbroken already and then the-topic-that-must-not-be-named would come up, and things instantly got 100 times worse. So before this post plummets into depressing territory, I’ll just say Eric was worried about Arie growing up without a dad, and now I’ll move on and get to the good stuff. His uncles. Yes, Arie has fabulous actual relative uncles…Jon and Reed will teach him how to play baseball and hockey, the importance of quality liquor and countless other things…but this post is about the friend uncles…the fruncles?

I’m trying to think about how I can explain the particular dynamic of our close friends without sounding super creepy…once upon a time there were two groups of friends, the Calvin Christian High School people and the Kalamazoo Christian High School people. At Calvin College we merged into one big group of friends and a lot of people ended up marrying other people in the group and living happily ever after – except me (womp womp). It’s like incestuous without anyone being related. See, I made it creepy, but it’s the funniest way to describe it. Anyways. My point is, we’re all very close. And most of us live within 5 blocks of each other.

So back to them being awesome. They’ve already taken responsibility for Arie. Tonight was the inaugural boys night with Arie…we’ll have to come up with a better name. A group of them came over, picked him up, took him for a walk with another one of the babies, fed him dinner, and just generally hung out with him all night. And their goal is to do this multiple times a month. Now I know what you’re thinking…he’s 9 months old (officially, since it’s past midnight while I’m writing this) he doesn’t know who’s taking care of him. But he will. Arie will grow up always having these men in his life. Men who love him because they love his dad. Men who will love him for his dad. Men who will tell him about the best parts of his dad. And I’m sure, men who will eventually teach him how to be a bit of a trouble maker, like his dad. They’ll be able to tell him about sides of Eric that no one else could, and give him a full picture of Eric…the good, the bad, and the stuff I don’t want to know about.

This group is special. And they’ve never felt like more of a blessing from the Lord. Not even that time they bought us a new tv 😉