All articles categorised as Reflections.
It was only a couple of weeks ago that Florida prepared for the arrival of Hurricane Helene. Yet now, the entire state is in the eye of Hurricane Milton which – at the time of writing – has just been upgraded to a category 5 hurricane, with sustained winds of 160mph.
Florida is again bracing itself for the onslaught of another hurricane. This time – hurricane Helene.
She is forecast to hit today, 26th September, as a category 3 hurricane. As of 2:25pm local time, it is now a category 3 with wind speeds of 120mph. Effects are starting to be seen across the coastline with reports of possible “unsurvivable” storm surges expected.
Update: around 6:20pm local time, Helene has now reached wind speeds of 130mph which makes it a category 4 hurricane. There is a chance it may strengthen to category 5 by landfall in a few hours’ time.
It is with great sadness the Royal Family today announced the passing of Queen Elizabeth II.
She died peacefully this afternoon at her beloved holiday home in Balmoral.
Thank you for everything, Your Majesty. May you rest peacefully.
… we’ve been expecting you.
2021 started with much hope of vaccines to bring an end to the COVID-19 pandemic, alas it wasn’t enough.
A year – and three vaccines later – and there is no end yet in sight. Although hospitalisations are steady, despite the rising number of cases of the Omicron variant, so maybe there is a glimmer of hope for 2022.
As I reflect on the last year, I’ve made some achievements I’m proud of – both personal and professional.
I started blogging about our journey to adopt our two young boys back in 2017. Some day I may finish the story.
For my first blog post of 2020, I thought I’d share one of my challenges of being a parent to the boys and a 5-year old Labrador called Mickey: crossing the road.
Florida is my go-to destination for a holiday. I’ve been several times since our honeymoon in 2012 and yet I still manage to find something new to see or do each time. When I fly into MCO airport and walk through the stunning atrium, I know I’m back in my happy place!
Whether you’ve never been before, or are going for the 20th time, this is a list of the top 10 things to do in Florida that I think will make your visit that little bit more memorable.
… but I’m OK with it.
A few days ago I sat in an airport lounge in Gatwick, waiting for our flight to Florida. I had finished a diet Coke and was chewing on a piece of yoghurt-covered honeycomb (which was delicious, FYI) when I read a news article about Brexit that stunned me.
Europe dumps 300,000 UK-owned .EU domains into the Brexit bin
Earlier this week, I couldn’t sleep. So I did what I normally do when I can’t sleep – I watch music videos on YouTube.
The first video in my “here’s what YouTube wants you to watch” list caught my eye. I immediately thought I had missed a piece of new music from one of my favourite artists of the last 10 years: Chris Daughtry.
However, as I watched it, I quickly realised two things:
My second post in a series of articles about James and my adoption journey is our experience of the first day of “prep group training.” You can read part 1 here.
A few days ago we turned up at the Halesowen Barnardo’s office for day 1 of three days of prep group training – a course that’s designed to provide the information, explanation and tools we will need as adoptive parents – not just to get through the adoption journey, but for the life of our future children.