Janelle {My Memories}

the morel mushroom haul

Nate has been just desperate to find some morel mushrooms. His friend Andrew is just obsessed with hunting for these things and finally one gorgeous evening they went out and succeeded. 

Bless Carla's heart she likes to spend a week of summer vacation at her Mom's house. We are thrilled for the extra chance to hang out with her and her kids. 

Hanging out with the sister in laws is so much fun.

 More fun times at the cabin. 

 Helicopter dusting the trees for bag worms. It is barely pictured here. My phone went dead after this shot.

I happened to have the kids down for naps at this time and I would go to check on Olive and every time she was sitting in the window sill watching the helicopter. Bless her heart. 

When it's warm enough to be outside again.
Harley still digs my flower out and I have been so mad at her this week.
However, she is so gentle with the children. Olive loves her.
Piper the puppy is a different story.

 We made the trip to SC for Janelle's funeral.

Janelle was our nanny slash cleaning lady  while I was pregnant with Henry. I was so happy to hire someone to mop my floors, and then she announced she was pregnant and I felt so bad that she was going to be mopping my floors.  The first day she showed up, she went to my Aunts house next door. My aunts house is very, very nice, worlds apart from our humble rancher and I still get silly when I picture her over there ringing the doorbell. I imagine she was thinking, “I had no idea!” Stuart loved her dearly. Janelle told Sonya that she could not even go to the bathroom without Stuart standing outside the door talking to her. Our due dates were 4 days apart.  I gave her my baby name book and told her to keep it. We went shopping for baby clothing to a consignment sale where the line to pay was so long that we didn’t make it back in time for prayer meeting. When she and Shannon were considering moving to Grenada for mission work we cheered and I sent her home with my photo book of our three years spent there. We teased each other about who would be the lucky person to have their baby first. Dylan was born and I had to wait 9 more days till Henry came. (Thankfully we had not picked the same name out, as we have the same last name. I was worried about anyone that was pregnant with a boy and had the last name Martin) We sat beside each other at a ballgame with our tiny new babies and I was feeling so great and she still was tired and out of energy. I figured it was first time Mom verses not first time Mom. And maybe it was, but maybe it was the lurking cancer that we were unaware of that was making her tired. Instead of heading to the islands she was taking chemo for liver cancer. The last time I went to see her was hard, I knew it was good bye. Her Mom gave me my baby name book back and I wanted to say, “You were supposed to keep this!” It’s hard to give up on our dreams, it was hard to watch them give up theirs, but both Shannon and Janelle were so brave. Trusting in God and desiring His will more than their own. Her service was lovely and it was the saddest funeral I have been too, yet it was not without hope. It is amazing the difference that Jesus makes in ones life. The promise of life after death. We do not need to despair, we will meet again.