Wednesday, July 31, 2013

We made it!

DONE!  We did it and made it to all 7 countries in 7 days.

The best part is that we raised an AWESOME $5,854 for the GSF and spread awareness about SMA to lots of good people who wanted to know more!!!! Hip hip hooray! 

And apologies for the late post as we did not have consistent access to wifi so this blog post is coming to you late.

COUNTRY#1:  Laren, Netherlands 

Our first stop: Laren, Netherlands, a mere 1.86 miles from Blaricum, the town we live in.  Laren is a beautiful little Dutch farming village that is charming, cute, have lots of animals for kids to see, and a quaint street with shops and restaurants that you can spend your day drinking wine, eating and milling about.  




Country #2

After our quick stop in Laren, we drove approximately 3.5 hours to Bastogne, Belgium.  Bastogne is where the famous, Battle of the Bulge took place during World War II.  The tank below is in honor of the 76,000+ american lives lost during the battle.  Near the city is also the Wood of Peace, where thousands of trees are planted to remember that deadly battle.  Interestingly, the forest is shaped like the UNICEF emblem and you can only see it from the sky.





Then from Bastogne we drove to the Besichtigung Castle, Luxembourg.  This should have been an hour drive but detours and touch and go navigation made it double that. On the plus side, we drove threw the rolling hills and quiet villages (when the kids weren't crying :-))  of Luxembourg. 

Besichtigung Castle


Doing a little toast at the castle ;)  




Above is the the view from the top...not to exciting especially compared to the view we had the next day in the Swiss Alps. Which is my next post . . . Zermatt Switzerland will blow your mind.




Wednesday, July 10, 2013

7 Days, 7 Countries for the GSF (the revised route)

On July 18 we will be embarking on a journey across 7 European countries in 7 days spreading awareness about SMA and helping raise funds for the Gwendolyn Strong Foundation. Below is beautiful Gwendolyn and a few of her best buddies including Connor.



Our goal is 3 fold:
  • Spread awareness about SMA....the #1 genetic killer among young children.
  • Raise MONEY for the Gwendolyn Strong Foundation's research, advocacy, and support programs!! Please click here to DONATE.
  • Teach our children that life is composed of many events (good and bad) and its not those events that make up who you are as a person, but how you react to those events.  Bill and Victoria Strong (the parents of Gwendolyn and founders of theGSF) are a symbol of how we should all lead our lives and that if you get knocked down, we can get up tomorrow and keep moving forward to inspire and make a difference.

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Below is the route of the 7 countries, Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Switzerland, Italy and Monaco that we will be visiting. Feel free to follow our journey via Facebook (Laurie Stone). 


Note: Origonally we were only going to visit Geneva in Switzerland and hike near there but I was really dreaming about visiting Zermatt Switzerland and seeing the famous Matterhorn. When we added Zermatt our route to Monaco changed to go through Italy. So we are swapping a stop in Germany for a stop in Italy.



For more information on the Gwendolyn Strong Foundation go to http://thegsf.org/home