Leonardo da Vinci. Virgin and Child with St. Anne. c.1502-1516. 

ST. Anne is my patron saint from birth but not until this year when I became a grandma did I realize what a role she played in the life of Our Lord.  Every time my grandson smiles, laughs, cries , does insanely funny things like scoot backward across the room and whine when he gets stuck on a chair did I think about how wonderful it must have been for her as a grandma!  So here is a little history of her life.  Evidently she is a wonder worker just like St. Jude and St. Anthony so I'm going to be invoking her daily especially for my children and grandchild(en). 
St. Anne
Mother of the Blessed Virgin

JULY 26

THE Hebrew word Anne signifies gracious. St. Joachim and St. Anne,
the parents of the Blessed Virgin Mary, are justly honored in the
church, and their virtue is highly extolled by St. John Damascene.
The emperor Justinian I built a church at Constantinople in honor of
St. Anne, about the year 550. Codinus mentions another built by
Justinian II, in 705. Her body was brought from Palestine to
Constantinople in 710, whence some portions of her relics have been
dispersed in the West. F. Cuper the Bollandist has collected a great
number of miracles wrought through her intercession. God has been
pleased by sensible effects to testify how much he is honored by the
devotion of the faithful to this saint, who was the great model of
virtue to all engaged in the married state, and charged with theeducation of children. It was a sublime dignity and a great honor for
this saint to give to a lost world the advocate of mercy and to be
parent of the Mother of God. But it was a far greater happiness to
be, under God, the greatest instrument of her virtue and to be
spiritually her mother by a holy education in perfect innocence and
sanctity St. Anne, being herself a vessel of grace--not by name only,
but by the possession of that rich treasure--was chosen by God to form
his most beloved spouse to perfect virtue; and her pious care of this
illustrious daughter was the greatest means of her own sanctification
and her glory in the church of God to the end of ages. It is a lesson
to all parents whose principal duty is the holy education of their
children. By this they glorify their Creator, perpetuate his honor on
earth to future ages, and sanctify their own souls. St. Paul says that
it is by the education of their children that parents are to be saved.
Nor will he allow any one who has had children, ever to be admitted to
serve the altar, whose sons do not, by their holy conduct, give proofs
of a virtuous education. Nevertheless, we see parents solicitous about
the corporal qualifications of their children, and earnest to procure
them an establishment in the world; yet supinely careless in
purchasing them virtue, in which alone their true happiness consists.
This reflection drew tears from Crates, a heathen philosopher who
desired to mount on the highest place in his city, and cry out, with
all his strength, "Citizens, what is it you think of? You employ all
your time in heaping up riches to leave to your children; yet take no
care to cultivate their souls with virtue, as if an estate were more
precious than themselves."

From "Butler's Lives of the Saints"