Today at Forty to Forever we are working to help the Killen family bring sweet Aiden home! Aiden needs to come home and learn that there are people in this world who truly love him, just as he is and the Killen family truly does love him, just as he is; even before he is home, they love him already. Please help them reach Aiden by contributing to their adoption funds.
Today’s Lent devotion is one of my favourite yet… it’s all about looking for God… or more like, NOT looking for God… because God is right there, right where He has placed us in our lives… right here with me as i type this, right there with you as you read this… my favourite line from today’s devotion… “God has prepared these things for you to do, and that in itself makes it a holy and good thing. God is here with you, in the works He has given you… (regardless of how small an impact you might think your work has…)”… syc
Our Goal is to raise $500 for Aiden and Lina… $354 to go!
Hello! We are Katherine and Asa Killen. We have been married for six years and have two gorgeous little girls ( Zoe, 4 and Piper, 19 months). God has blessed us beyond belief. I feel so incredibly honored to have married my best friend and to have been given our two precious little angels. Now, I am not the best writer so you will have to bear with me as I share our story. I will try to speak as candidly as possible in the hopes of conveying the pure emotion and Godly platform in which this adoption has come to be.
This past summer I felt God laying adoption on my heart. It was like a persistent knocking and a need that I couldn’t describe, not even to my husband. I ignored the knocking; thinking, “No…
So here’s Part 2 as promised… if you missed Part 1, you can read it here.
This second trip we went back to Wengen. We were up there for a whole week with a good friend last year. You can read about it here.
So this time we chose to stay only 3 nights which meant that booking a self-catering chalet was out. You have to take a full week when renting holiday chalets. i got us booked into a nice hotel about 5-10mins walk (depending how fast your child would walk) outside of the main town of Wengen.
The Hotel Bellevue is a lovely hotel, which hosts the Lauberhorn Ski World Cup Competitors every January. Don’t expect to find rooms at that time. It is run by a very friendly couple, the service is very personal.
The room we were given was nice and big and very comfortably sleeps 3. i dare say it could sleep 4 even. It is well-advertised as a TV-free hotel which is great when what you have come to the mountains to do is to get away from it all 😉 We were picked up at the Wengen Train Station by the very nice owner himself, in his yellow electric taxi. Guests can store their ski equipment in town at the Central Sport, free of charge. Which is great as you really want to do as little dragging around of your skis as possible, especially with child in tow.
Here’s a view of the hotel itself:
i love how the hotel looks perched on the edge of the mountain.
i’m sorry that i don’t have nice pictures of the room we stayed in. We had all settled in and the room was already messy by the time i remembered i wanted pictures. But there was a feature of the hotel which amused me – the fire escape on every floor was out a window at the end of the corridor, usually covered by a plant. See…
And on our floor, there is a toilet on the right and shower room on the left 😉
The view from the hotel is amazing. Have a look:
Left: View from the breakfast room, Right: View from our room window – it would have been better if it had been sunny that first day.
So what do people do to entertain themselves if there was no TV? Well, there is one TV, which is located in the lounge/bar area. But we only watched it for like 30-mins one of the evenings we were there.
A nice relax area with a full bar.
What i did love but didn’t have a chance to use was the very lovely reading rooms. Gorgeously decorated with Victorian-styled furniture, you could read all day in here. They even provide the books and board games.
i absolutely love those chairs, especially that big red one!
There is also an outdoor Jacuzzi, which again we didn’t use and a nice balcony area where you could soak in that amazing view i showed you before.
Jacuzzi with a view! That’s the life…
The evening we arrived we went to visit Walter’s Uncle who runs a Chinese Restaurant on the other side of the valley in the resort town of Mürren. It was yummy Chinese for dinner, made more yummy by the fact that we had to travel out in the very cold evening for a good 40-mins before tucking in. It’s called Tham’s Restaurant and is the only Chinese Restaurant there. So if you are ever in Mürren, i highly recommend going there for great food.
Here we are having some fun while waiting for the train to take us back down to the valley and then another train back up the other side to Wengen.
Being silly in the cold…
We came back just in time to watch the Wengen Ski School put up their annual ski show. We watched this last year but it was really fun so we decided to watch it again this year. It was too dark and we stood too far for good shots of the show itself but the fireworks made great photos. They exploded as the trick skiers and snowboards jumped the ramp.
Fireworks always amaze me…
That first day of skiing was great but the weather was terrible. So much fog. We could hardly see where we were going on the slopes, quite scary for some parts. Tobias and myself gave up by about mid-afternoon and headed back. Walter stayed for a little longer.
The second day was fantastic! The weather was beautiful and the snow was good. Plus we had good friends come up and ski with us. The slopes are wide and long which makes for great skiing with a large group.
This was taken just before that fog cloud lifted… then it was clear all day!
Here’s a shot of all the kids who were with us that day (oh no, we are missing one kid… she was skiing with her dad):
They were all great skiers/snowboarders.
At the end of the day, we went back down to Wengen, had a hot drink and then caught the Rescue Dog Show. It was interesting and all of us love dogs so it was a great way to end the day. The youngest of the Hartkop children, Juli, even volunteered to be hidden in the snow and wait for the dog to come rescue her! Very exciting for us to watch.
Left: Juli walking towards the hole she was to be “buried” in, Right: Big smile after being “rescued”.
All in all, it was a great little trip. We will definitely be coming back to Wengen. Till our next trip.
Day 11 at Forty to Forever – help the Mitchell Family bring Matthias home!! We almost named Tobias, Matthias – both names mean God is Good! And indeed God is Good! But you are his hands and feet, so please go over and help the Mitchells.
Today’s Lent devotion asks us whether we would want yesterday’s spoiled leftover food or today’s yummy feast or tomorrow’s smells of possible food. Have a read and you can decide for yourself… syc
Our Goal is to raise $500 for Matthias and Lina… $178 to go!
I am so excited to share this wonderful family with you today! The Mitchell family first began their adoption for a little boy named Adam. They were almost fully funded and doing well in fundraising to bring their son home.
Adam is not in a good orphanage. He is almost 6 years old and weighs just 16 pounds. He has hydrocephalus and just received a shunt this past September, after over 5 years of agonizing pain. In the midst of trying to get their adoption expedited to get him the medical care and nutrition he desperately needs, they made the commitment to bring home a second son – Matthias. This means they are now crunched for time to finish their fundraising efforts.
Matthias was recently transferred to a group home at nearly six years of age… In…
Hello! We are Katherine and Asa Killen. We have been married for six years and have two gorgeous little girls ( Zoe, 4 and Piper, 19 months). God has blessed us beyond belief. I feel so incredibly honored to have married my best friend and to have been given our two precious little angels. Now, I am not the best writer so you will have to bear with me as I share our story. I will try to speak as candidly as possible in the hopes of conveying the pure emotion and Godly platform in which this adoption has come to be.
trippingdifferently 