Holiday Tea
(c) Sherri Matthews 2013
It’s Christmas, the most wonderful time of the year!
The time of year when we think of family, hearth and home, the season of peace and goodwill, glad tidings to all men.
Like so many of you, I could write about a thousand Christmas memories.
Mine would be mostly good, some not so good, and one or two that are so spectacularly bad and, dare I say, laughable, that I wonder if I am actually imagining them.
Like the time when I was 19 and took my American GI boyfriend to visit my by-then-full-blown-alcoholic-dad at his dingy flat somewhere near Sutton.
I came down with the flu (first time) and spent the entire time lying on the couch shivering and coughing. My dad, very drunk for the duration, decided to take a swing at my boyfriend for no particular reason (he missed) and so my boyfriend spent his Christmas Eve down at the local pool hall which ended up with him having a punch up with the local lads, having dared beat them on their home turf.
Or of a happier time when my friends and I spent one Christmas Eve going on a massive pub crawl through the streets of Ipswich, where once I lived back in the day, and of being kissed by every bloke we ran into, mistletoe or not. We were full of Christmas cheer you understand.
Melding memories of Christmases from my childhood and those spent with my own children. Of living in America and wanting to bring a traditional British Christmas into my home and so making not only a Christmas pudding but a brandy-laced heavy fruit Christmas cake, beautifully decorated with royal icing adorned with a tiny plastic santa, snowman and reindeer to look like a snow scene.
Only to discover on Christmas morning as I staggered in to the kitchen to put the oven on in readiness for the turkey that an army of ants were devouring it. No great loss to my children, they didn’t like the darn cake anyway.
Christmas Pudding
(c) Sherri Matthews
Of a cat from our distant past who loved nothing more than to strip the Christmas tree of all it’s ornaments as high as it could jump and one year managing to bring the entire tree down.
Let’s face it, cats (or at least kittens) and Christmas trees just don’t go together. Some years ago, when Maisy was much younger and naughtier, she got it into her head to scale the inside of our tree. There we were, oblivious to this as we sat on the sofa, when, without warning, the tree started swaying from side to side before a very spooked Maisy quite literally flew out from the middle of the tree looking like a flying squirrel, so huge and puffed out was her tail. I don’t know who was more shocked, us or her. We didn’t see her again for hours, days even…
Maisy & Eddie love their new made-for-cats Santa hats, complete with Santa beard
(c) Sherri Matthews 2013
We all hope for those Norman Rockwell moments at this time of year, yet for some Christmas polarises the expectation of a perfect family life as bitter resentments otherwise hidden lurk in the heart of an unhappy marriage all year-long and which are suddenly exposed, becoming like touch-paper needing only the merest spark to ignite them leaving a black, charred mess in its wake.
Certainly, Christmas sparked off some of the worst times between my ex-husband (EH) and I. Our last Christmas spent together in California saw us have the almightiest of rows over him eating some Christmas cookies which I had put aside for the children to decorate later. Sounds ridiculous now but of course it was never about the cookies…
Yet, I adore Christmas and always have! Some of my happiest early childhood memories are of Christmases spent with my mum, dad and brother together, snow falling gently outside, the coal fire burning in the grate, honeycomb paper lanterns hanging from the ceiling and beautifully wrapped presents around the Christmas tree. Not forgetting, however, the horrendous stomach-aches I would get from eating too many of those delicious cocktail onions at Granddad and Nana’s house on Boxing Day!
I was often asked over in America, what IS Boxing Day? I would answer that it is a national holiday, a traditional day for visiting those relatives who you were unable to spend Christmas Day with. In actual fact, it got it’s name not from the sport but from the days when tradesmen and servants received a gift from their employers which was known as the ‘Christmas Box’. Christmas in America always seemed to be incomplete without Boxing Day and it was at this time of year that I missed my family back ‘home’ the most.
So many sweet new memories to make then!
Happy Christmas Kids!
(c) Sherri Matthews 2013
One in particular is the tradition that we started as a family of driving around our neighbourhood when it was dark to see all the magnificent Christmas light displays on everyone’s houses. I had never seen anything like it in England. They truly were magical and the kids loved this annual tradition, as did I!
Once, we found ourselves driving along a rather precariously winding, unlit road having taken a wrong turn. Suddenly, a deer jumped out in front of us. We stopped and stared at this beautiful creature as it stared back at us for an instance before darting off and of course, we told the kids that it was Rudolph.
From that moment on, every year we took the same precarious drive with the churning sea below us and the tall, wind-blown pines reaching up to the starlit sky by the side of us but we never saw Rudolph again.
Christmas sagas, we’ve all had them. For us, many seem to revolve around the ‘Christmas Tree’. The getting of, the setting up of, the decorating of. Last year we got a nice, cheap traditional tree. The needles started falling off immediately despite it standing in water. It was the classic Charlie Brown Christmas tree. By the time we took down the decorations, it looked like this:
Poor Christmas Tree
(c) Sherri Matthews 2013
Not a little ironically, the last Christmas Tree Saga that was the catalyst for more problems between EH and I happened the same year as the Christmas Cookie saga – that is, during the last Christmas I spent in America. Actually, it wasn’t so much about the tree but more about what happened after we got it.
Not many months before we had bought our very first brand new car, more like a truck really, a dark green Chevy Suburban. I loved it. I didn’t see a problem with putting the tree on the built-in roof racks to bring it home but EH insisted on us getting a trailer as he didn’t want to scratch the truck. As it turned out, he got much more than he bargained for.
On the morning that I had to return the trailer I simply forgot it was there. I put the car into reverse and backed out of our driveway as I had done a million times before to do the morning school run (rushing as usual) except that this time a sickening thud, both felt and heard, stopped me in my tracks. I hardly dared look in my wing mirror but as I did so I could see the jack-knifed trailer nicely embedded in the side of my brand new Suburban.
The entire panel had to be replaced and several weeks later I thought it looked good as new. EH, however, was not impressed.
Many years have passed since that time. I am so thankful for all the great blessings in my life. I still get to spend Christmas with my grown children and there are no arguments about cookies – yes, I still make them, every year – and the happiest of times spent together as a family far outweigh the crazy, wilder and yes, unhappy times. At least nobody could say it’s boring around here!
Christmas Decs on the Tree
(c) Sherri Matthews 2013
My life and the world in which I now live is far removed. Like the world that a certain baby was born into some two thousand years ago. I saw a cartoon in a paper last week. It was the classic nativity scene with baby Jesus, swaddled and sleeping in his crib but Mary, Joseph and the donkey were looking on with rather perplexed looks on their faces. That is because the three wise men were standing behind the babe posing for a selfie with a mobile phone.
It made me laugh, I just know that God has a sense of humour. He has to!
The world that Jesus was born into may as well have been another planet compared to the world that we live in today, yet the message which was given by the angel to this very lost world of ours back then remains the same as it ever was to us today.
‘And the angel said unto them, ‘Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people’. Luke 2:10 King James Bible
So then, it is with this thought, and this image, that I leave you and wish you all, my dear friends, a very Happy Christmas filled with joy, love and peace and a New Year filled with every blessing so that wherever you are in the world and whoever you are with, that you are able to take some time out with your loved ones and ponder the true meaning of the season and so be filled with the joy, peace and hope for the future that comes with it.
Nativity made for me by my daughter when she was four years old.
There used to be straw under baby Jesus but that disappeared years ago.
(c) Sherri Matthews 2013
This will be my last post until the new year (although I will do my best – and may fail – to dip in and out for the next couple of days here and there before signing off completely) so that I can spend as much time as possible with Hubby, my family and my chicks who are back in the nest for Christmas! I will miss you all but I look forward very much to catching up, fresh and ready to write, write and write some more in 2014!
As I always say, ‘Watch this space’!
Love Sherri x
A View From My Summerhouse 
Have a Merry Christmas, Sherri. Thank you for sharing your memories with us.
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Merry Christmas to you Bev, hope you have a really wonderful time 🙂
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A most wonderful and blessed Christmas, Sherri. As always, your memories, even the bad ones, warm the heart. Love to you and your family.
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And to you Susan, a very Merry Christmas with love to you and yours 🙂
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Have a Very Merry Christmas Sherri! I loved reading this post. I too, did the rides in the evening looking at man made winter wonderlands. I have Christmas mice hung about and one Christmas cat eyeing the tree precariously. Thankfully, Lucky is far too fat to attack the tree like he used to! Enjoy your cookies and time with your “chicks.” I’m very grateful we “met” this year 🙂
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Ha Ha! I can just imagine your cat eyeing up your tree! One good thing about them getting ‘bigger’ is that they are less likely to want to do some damage to it!
Thanks so much Ilka, and I too am so very grateful for you and all my dear friends here.
Wishing you a Very Merry Christmas too, with your lovely family, and looking forward to ‘seeing’ you in 2014 🙂
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Thank you for sharing your wonderful and not so wonderful memories of Christmases past, Sherri. Discovering your blog late this year has been one of the best gifts I could receive.
I appreciate you sharing the tradition of Boxing Day, it sounds perfect. Of course here in the states, everyone heads to the stores to return the gifts that were the wrong size, color, etc. I think I’ll celebrate Boxing Day here in North Carolina, it sounds much nicer. 🙂 Wishing you and your family peace and joy in the New Year, Sherri! Have fun with your chicks!
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Ahh, thanks so much Jill, wow, what a lovely, kind thing to say! You’ve just given me the best gift right back 🙂
Yes, Boxing Day, as I shared it in the more traditional sense is a wonderful day, but sadly it is becoming more and more about the after-Christmas sales here too. My kids joke about it saying at the end of Christmas Day, ‘Hey Mom, you better get down there to the shops and start camping out to catch the sales!’ because they know that is my idea of hell on earth. I think it’s such a shame. When I was growing up this was unheard of as everything closed down at least a week for Christmas, but people took time out to enjoy family time. So sad that this seems to be a dying art in our culture.
Enjoy your North Carolinian Boxing Day Jill – there, you are starting a new tradition over there! Peace and joy be yours too, for Christmas and the New Year in abundance and ‘see’ you soon 🙂
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Merry Christmas, Sherri. We have boxing day in Australia and New Zealand as well but I never knew how it got its name. We used to joke that it was called boxing day because that is the day you box up the presents you don’t like and return them to the shop. 🙂
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Ahh yes, that’s right so you do! Yes, it does seem to be what most people do these days isn’t it, instead of just enjoying extended time with family. Once Christmas Eve arrives I don’t want to go near a shop for as long as possible!
Merry Christmas to you once again Rachel, I bet your children are getting soooooo excited! ‘See’ you soon 🙂
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A great nostalgic trip through your family Christmases, Sherri. We all share things in common – our Christmas family traditions are our own, for sure, but there are threads of similarities there too. Have a very, very Happy Christmas and a peaceful New Year with your chicks. See you on the other side – 2014! It’s been great blogging with you this year.
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Ha Ha, yes, see you on the other side indeed Jenny 🙂 Likewise, so glad I ‘met’ you here, it’s been a wonderful blogging journey hasn’t it? We should both make a toast to Spamgate on Christmas Day 🙂
Have a wonderful, Happy Christmas and look forward to catching up in the New Year – and here’s to one filled with peace, health and happiness. ‘See’ you soon 🙂
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Love this tidbits about you and your family Sherri! Especially the about the time you ran into Rudolph. 🙂
Have a Merry and Blessed Christmas to you and your family!
XO
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Ahh, thanks so much Jhanis! Yes, I wonder where Rudolph is now??? 😉
I can just imagine the excitement building in your home -how will you contain it!! A very Merry Christmas and a New Year filled with every blessing to you and your lovely family and I’ll ‘see’ you soon 🙂 xx
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It’s been crazy! but loving every single moment!
Yes, see you soon! 🙂
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I bet…I can feel your joy and it’s so wonderful 🙂 x
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Thanks for walking down memory lane with us. I take it you were a bit of a wild girl back then? I hope you enjoy having your family around you and have an awesome Christmas.
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Ha Ha! Hope I haven’t given the wrong impression, lol 😉 I was only 18 at the time but my antics would seem tame compared to what these youngsters get up to these days…oh dear, now I sound like a proper oldie 😉
Thanks so much Sandra, I certainly will and I do hope that you are recovered in time to enjoy your Christmas too.
A Very Happy Christmas to you and a healthy and Happy New Year and looking forward to catching up in 2014 🙂
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Hi Sherri. I replied to your email a short time ago. Still catching up on them. I was tame during my childhood and more lively now. Still a good girl though. I don’t smoke or take drugs and haven’t drank alcohol since I was 19. I am a bit of a manic dancer when well.
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Yes, got that thanks!
Ha Ha! I LOVE dancing, best exercise there is 🙂
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I agree and guineapig cuddling.
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Have a great Christmas Sherri. Thanks for being such a wonderful blogging buddy this year. As I was born in Ipswich, you know what an affectionate group of people we can be (after a little marinating), so big hugs from me and I look forward to keeping in touch in the new year.
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Ha Ha! Thanks so much Dylan, great to know that things haven’t changed in Ipswich and I do love hugs!! It’s been great sharing our blogging journeys and again, I want to thank you so much for coming to my aid over ‘Spamgate’ – remember, the bad old, good old days??!! – and for all your great technical help and advice. You have a wonderful Christmas too (bet your house is bursting with excitement just about now!) and ‘see’ you in 2014 🙂
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Love the Nativity scene especially without the missing straw. 🙂
Have a Merry Christmas and Hap-hap-happy New Year. 😀
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Yes…the missing straw, lol 🙂
Thanks so much Tess, it’s great knowing you, and a very Merry Chrsitmas and Hap-hap-happy New Year to you too…love that 🙂
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What a lovely year it has been here this year. Thank you Sherri. It’s been so nice meeting you. 😉
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So much fun to pop in and share some Christmas memories with you. Wishing you and your family a blessed Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! 🙂
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Ahh, bless you Pat, and the very same to you too! I bet you are so cosy and ready for Christmas, I can just imagine it, sitting around your kitchen table sharing quite a few Christmas memories with you whilst sipping a cup of Christmas cheer 🙂
Wishing you and your family all blessings for Christmas and the New Year and looking forward to catching up with you in 2014 🙂
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Thank you, Sherri, for your warm wishes for this Christmas holiday season. It is cozy and warm and truly counting my blessings.
Anytime, come share your stories at my kitchen table on my site. Always enjoy it when you pay a visit.
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Wonderful memories Sherri. I hope this year gives you more good memories . Best wishes to you and your family for a Happy christmas. See you next year. 🙂
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Thanks so much Irene, we all have so many memories at this time of year! It’s been great getting to know you and thanks so much for all your support of my blog. I wish you every success too and yes, many more good memories to be made for us both!
Happy Christmas and New Year to you and your family, look forward to ‘seeing’ you next year too 🙂
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🙂
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Oh Sherri, I love the honesty and vulnerability behind your posts. It makes it so easy to relate to you. Yes, we’ve all had Christmas disasters and it’s nice to know that I’m not the only one! More important are the good memories, and you’ve had so many! One of our traditions is driving around and looking at Christmas lights too. It’s one of my favorite parts of Christmas Day 🙂 I hope that you have a blessed holiday.
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Ahh, thanks so much Heather, your lovely words always bring such a warm smile to my heart 🙂 Christmas certainly is the most wonderful time of year, despite some disasters along the way 😉
Enjoy your Christmas lights and wishing you and your family a Christmas filled with every good thing, and all blessings for the New Year when I look forward to catching up with you then 🙂
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Thank you for sharing so many of your Christmas memories. They have placed a smile on my face as they stir up so many of my own. Enjoy your vacation from the blog and enjoy your family. God Bless!
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Thanks so much Andy! Have a wonderful, blessed Christmas and I look forward to catching up with you in the new year.., 🙂
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Up with Boxing Day, down with Black Friday.
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Ha Ha! Yes, I am so in agreement with that Nav 🙂
Wishing you a very Happy Christmas and a New Year filled with every blessing. I’ll see you in 2014 🙂
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Thank you, Sherri. And a merry Christmas and a happy New Year to you and yours.
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🙂
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Lovely of you to share your Christmas memories with us Sherri. Like you I have had good and not so good times. Now all my chicks are grown and some even have chicks of their own! Boxing Day we are off down to Surrey to meet up with most of them, the Aussie family we hope to see next year. Have a lovely week – I’m sure you will – and store more lovely memories to write about in the future.
It has been really good to meet you this year and I will raise a glass to Spamgate which brought several of us closer together 😀
Jude xx
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Ahh, I am still waiting for grand-chicks!! How lovely that you get to see most of your family on Boxing Day and something wonderful to look forward to for next year with your Aussie family hopefully 🙂
Thanks so much Jude, yes indeed, it has been wonderful to have met you and our little group through Spamgate, and I will certainly be toasting you all for its totally unexpected and lovely end result!
Wishing you safe travels and a very Happy Christmas, to you and your family, and here’s to a happy, healthy and joy-filled New Year…look forward to catching up then 🙂 xx
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Thank you for the great Christmas memories, Sherri. The description of the cat “flying” out of the Christmas tree made me laugh. And thanks for describing what Boxing Day is all about. I was going to Google it but hadn’t gotten around to it yet. I love the idea of Boxing Day, and this year I took the two days after Christmas off from work because our daughter who lives 5 hours away is bringing her family home for Christmas and she’ll be here until Sunday. I think it should be a US holiday too, but I’m sure my boss would disagree unless it landed on a weekend.
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Ahh, so glad you enjoyed reading about these memories, even if not all quite so good, but all part of life!!
I’m so glad that you get to spend that amount of time with your daughter and family over Christmas and you got the time off work to stretch it out. It’s so important as you well know. I used to love it when my mum would come over to visit when we lived in the States as she would come from mid December until just after the new year, but of course I only saw her once a year so we made the most of it!
I always felt so bad for my mother-in-law who would come over Christmas Eve, late after work, have Christmas Day with us and then have to leave at the crack of dawn the next day, Boxing Day, to get back to Los Angeles, 4 hours away for work. It’s a shame it isn’t a holiday over there.
Thanks so much Donna, have an absolutely wonderful Christmas with your family and I look forward to ‘seeing’ you in the new year 🙂
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Sherri, you have an amazing ability to inject the perfect amount of humor into your writing. I love reading your posts because even when bad things happen, you never sound bitter… or jaded.
I hope that you and your family have a very Merry Christmas! And, may the New Year bring you many wonderful blessings 🙂
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Ahh Theresa, you are always so kind and I’m always so blessed by what you share, thanks so much. I’m just so glad that I don’t sound jaded or bitter! It’s funny as I thought of several memories I was going to write about but this is what I ended up with 😉
I can just imagine how very excited your darling grandson is just about now, and I wish you and yours a really wonderful Christmas and New Year filled with every blessing. I’ll look forward to catching up with you in 2014 🙂
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Wow, what memories. Thanks for sharing them! I hope this Christmas gives you good ones 🙂 God bless!
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Thanks so much Jennifer, and God Bless you too 🙂 Here’s to many new, good memories indeed and for you too, for a truly Happy Christmas and New Year in every way! See you next year 🙂
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I have had some very good and very bad Christmases. This year is not looking at being one of the better ones. My kids are at their mum’s on Christmas Day. The first time in years that I won’t have them. So I won’t see anyone on Wednesday until late afternoon. At least Boxing Day will be my Christmas Day.
Some of your memories are spectacular. I like that Selfie cartoon 😀 I can understand getting annoyed about the cookies. I can imagine the kids were disappointed as well for not having them to decorate.
I hope this year is a memorable one for you, and thank you for coming past my blog. I look forward to seeing some of your posts in the new year
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Oh, I’m so very sorry that you won’t have your children with you on Christmas Day, it can be such a painful time. I’m so glad though that you get to have Boxing Day to look forward to, as you say, your Christmas with your lovely kids. I haven’t had my middle son home for the past two Christmases so this is the first year I have all three of mine home together.
Ha Ha! Yes, that Selfie did make me laugh, glad you too, especially in light of the recent shenanigans with a few certain world leaders… 😉
Thanks so much Al, and likewise, I do look forward very much to reading more of your blog in the new year and let’s hope that 2014 is a good year for us both, with good memories in the making… 🙂
Happy Christmas/Boxing Day 🙂
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I bet you are looking forward to that 🙂
Have a great time Sherri.
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Shows how much I know about the British. I thought Boxing Day was about putting the gifts away and making a party of it. Thanks for the lesson, Sherri. 😉
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Glad I was able to clear that up Glynis!! When I was growing up I thought it was because my dad watched boxing on the tv!! Unfortunately, these days, a lot of the sales kick off now on Boxing Day so it isn’t quite the family day it was when I was growing up, you almost have to fight for that now, but we are determined, as many I know are, to keep it a traditional time for spending time with family and a good excuse to carry on with the Christmas festivities!
Wishing you a very Happy Christmas and New Year and looking forward to ‘seeing’ you in 2014 🙂
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Beautiful post, funny, evocative, and leading to a very touching message at the end!
You are better off without a cookie eating husand…
I remember you talking about last year’s tree. That is truly a long suffering specimen, but bravely struggled on till the end.
Happy Christmas Sherri (with Boxing Day – it’s shocking to think of one without) and see you in the New Year!
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Ha Ha, point taken 🙂
Thanks Denise, this year’s Nordmann Fir is holding up much better, barely a needle dropped. Hope with yours too!
You and your lovely LDs, have a truly wonderful Christmas (and Boxing Day!) too Denise, it’s been great blogging with you this year, and I look forward to reading more of your wonderful posts and sharing in your adventures next year 🙂
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Wonderful Christmas stories, Sherri. I think my favorite is the international incident, when you woke up to American ants devouring your British fruit cake!
I wish you and your entire family more continuing, delightful and heart-warming Christmas experiences.
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Thanks so much Marylin. Yes, you can probably imagine that I have quite a few ‘international incident’ stories to tell, but this was the one that came first and foremost to mind as I wrote this post!!!
The same to you too of course, all best wishes for a truly peaceful, blessed and joy-filled Christmas and New Year, and I look forward to sharing more family adventures with you and you dear mom in 2014 🙂
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As always, I love reading your stuff. Merry Christmas to you my friend! Thanks for sharing in the Sherri way! Love It!
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Hi Sheila, I’ve missed you my friend! Thanks so much, and of course wishing you, your dear mom and all your family a very Merry Christmas and a New Year filled with every blessing. Catch up in 2014 🙂
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Oh Christmas does bring back a lot of memories. i remember the year my dad gave my mom a floor scrubber, but the idiot gave it to her early so she could clean the house before Christmas. That’s wasn’t the best Christmas in our household, but I laugh about it now. I love your kitties!
happy holidays! Thanks for sharing your memories and I wish you many more memorable ones to come.
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Wow, not the best gift that one! Glad you can laugh about it now, I bet your mom must have been furious!
Yes, our kitties do love their Christmas outfits, you can tell by the look of joy on their faces … 😉
Thanks TB, and yes, ‘Happy Holidays’ to you too! I really enjoyed our recent guest blog posts, and I look forward to reading more about your writing adventures too! Here’s to good memories in the making 🙂
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Life certainly isn’t boring around your hearth Sherri – loved your Christmas memories, which made me laugh and touched me. Have a great Christmas and look forward to reading more next year!
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Ha Ha, thanks so much Andrea! How very true, boring is not a word I would use to describe my family life! Can’t quite believe that in quickly catching up before getting back to ‘full-on’ blogging that Christmas is already over with and now we are into 2014! I hope that you had a wonderful Christmas and a very Happy New Year to you. Looking forward to catching up with you too 🙂
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Hope you had a lovely Christmas, Sherri. These are wonderful memories, thanks for sharing them. The cookies one made me giggle.
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Ahh, thanks so much Catherine. We had a wonderful family time thanks, despite the storms threatening to cause travel mayhem (will be blogging about that in my next post!!).
Yes, the cookies…say no more 😉
Hope you had a lovely Christmas and a very Happy New Year to you!
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Sherri: As this busy month comes to an end, I want to thank you for your publishings; and comments this past year, and hoping for you and yours to have a most happy and productive New Year. Marty 🙂
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Marty, I so appreciate your comment here, thanks so much and for your very kind wishes. This means a great deal to me and I want to thank you for taking the time to read my posts practically since I started blogging, for your great comments here and also to say how very much I enjoy your blog too.
I will never forget the journey you took me on across America back in the 60s 🙂 Oh, and I haven’t forgotten about my upcoming Morro Bay post…it will happen I promise!
I hope you and your family had a wonderful Christmas and I wish you too a very happy and successful New Year 🙂
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Happy New Year Sherri!
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Thank you very much Sheryl, and a very Happy New Year to you too…I hope you had a wonderful Christmas 🙂
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Forget Norman Rockwell; Chevy Chase provides a lot more laughs!
Thanks for sharing! Happy New Year!
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Ha Ha! Yes, I agree, and I love Chevy Chase! Happy New Year to you too Jennifer 🙂
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Oh, the new hairdo avatar looks fab.
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Oh thanks very much Nav for the lovely compliment (hope you don’t mind me calling you that, but I sort of like it so hope you do too!) I just thought it was time to update things a bit and I had never completed my profile on my Gravatar so at least I have now done that 🙂
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Nav is perfectly fine, and the new style suits you very well.
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Great 🙂 (And you are very kind)
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