Ann Marie, thanks for creating this blog for us. It looks great and I love your initial post about your Christmas memories of mom/Michelle. Sorry, I never could get used to calling Michelle Shelly and she never called me Jim even though everyone else did. I'm afraid I'll have to continue to go with Michelle here even though the blog is called Memories of Shelly. I've been told that writing memories like this is a good idea and can be very therapeutic. So thanks.

I'll share a few Christmas memories from our early marriage years that you kids wouldn't remember. Our first Christmas was in the "castle" with the turret in Rexburg. It was a beautiful old house and we loved living there until we got our first heating bill. It had no insulation so we basically turned off the heat, bundled up, put on lots of blankets, and made good use of body heat. We quickly found a job managing apartments and moved out of there the week after Christmas. We were dirt poor so that Christmas in the "castle" was where the "Charlie Brown" Christmas tree tradition started and there wasn't much under that tree, but we had each other. The next Christmas we were managing Pineview apartments at Ricks. Ann Marie was 6 months old and Grandma and Grandpa brought Christmas from Oregon and we got spoiled. I think that was the year Grandpa bought Sweetums and gave him to Ann Marie. The co-ed girls in the apartments threw their trees in the dumpster before they went home for the holidays, so I went dumpster diving and found a really nice "Charlie Brown" tree, and it was free. It even had all the decorations still on it. Ann Marie, I just noticed that the first picture of Michelle in your Christmas post shows this free "Charlie Brown" tree in the picture with the free decorations still on it. She loved all Christmas decorations but her favorites were always the nativity sets. Michelle loved Christmas because she loved the Savior. In one of the many boxes of decorations we went through this year, and among the several nativity sets we found Fisher Price nativity sets that were not even opened. Michelle had obviously purchased them for future grandchildren (hint, hint). She always made sure Christmas was centered on Christ, for her children and even for her future grandchildren.

Karen, thank you for sharing your childhood memories of Christmas with Michelle.