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These two beautiful ladies are my grandmothers. My Dad's mom on the left we call Maw Maw. And on the right, as you already know, is my mom's mom, Mernie. Their actual names are Helen and Thelma, respectively.

Remember how I told you earlier that I might explain how we came to call my grandmother Mernie? I guess this is as good a page as any to do that on. If you're curious, the story is posted at the bottom of the page.

Jennifer poses with her two newest grandmothers.

And finally, all four of them together.
The four most important women in my life.
Three who were instrumental in my being here...
and then the one who completes me!

Blessed indeed!

And now, here is the funny little story of "Mernie". It's not really all that big a deal, so I hope you won't be let down after all this drama! Hehehe...

You see, when Cathy and I were little bitty, Mom and Daddy tried to teach us to call our maternal grandparents "Mother" and "Dad". Well wouldn't you just know it! One of us (who will remain unnamed for the purpose of protecting his fragile ego) could not actually say "Mother", but instead could only manage to enunciate "Munner". And so for the first couple of years after she had grandchildren old enough to speak, "Mother" was actually called "Munner".

Now that lasted right up until the time when another of Munner's grandchildren attempted to pronounce "Munner" but ran into a little trouble with that one as well. Somehow in the translation, this "Munner" got turned into...... you guessed it... "Mernie"! And when it became apparent that this other grandchild was going to stick with that name, we all gradually just did what you always do when one of your little ones has trouble with pronunciation; we changed Mother's name again, and this one stuck.

So for the biggest part of our lives, she has been (and always will be) Mernie!

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