The Kalispell von Trapps on the "Oprah Winfrey Show"

One of my laptops is getting older and slowing down. I thought by purging some old emails I could speed her up. To me, deleting old emails is akin to throwing away a letter someone wrote. I wouldn’t dream of pitching someone‘s letter in the trash, that‘s why I save them in a box. Some I store in a special box labeled “Grandkids”.

I delete emails as I go, so I figured I must be saving the old emails for something. I began to look at my sent log, and to wonder what I had said to my kids 5 years ago after moving here to Montana.

“I have 360° views,” I said in one of the emails. “Your dad says he feels like he has died and gone to heaven,” I said in another.

I was simply ecstatic to be here in Kalispell, the “prairie above the lake”. Never before had I spoken so highly of a place in which I lived. I imagine the big kids thought I had gone bonkers.

Perhaps you think so too, considering I started this post with the lyrics to “The Sound of Music” and haven’t said a peep about it. I’ll tell you why I started this post this way.  Shortly after moving here in 2005 I took this picture of David and the girls in Glacier National Park. The view was breathtaking!  We call it “the hills are alive” picture.

Views on the east side of the Going to the Sun Road – Glacier National Park

Little did I know at the time that the great-grandchildren of Captain Georg von Trapp also live here in the Flathead Valley. Sofia, Melanie, Amanda, and Justin von Trapp grew up in the family’s Austrian style home somewhere between here in Kalispell, and the town of Somers.

I’ve read that the children began singing for local audiences as preschoolers. After a cross-country tour in 2002 that captivated audiences everywhere, a decision was made to home school and take them on the road. They have been very successful and have performed around the world, from the Sydney Opera House in Australia to Africa and Japan. So huge is their success that Oprah Winfrey has invited them to perform on her show reuniting the cast of “The Sound of Music”. It will be the first time in 45 years that the entire cast including Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer will all come together. I’m looking forward to it.Little did I know at the time that the great-grandchildren of Captain Georg von Trapp live here in the Flathead Valley. Sofia, Melanie, Amanda, and Justin von Trapp grew up in the family’s Austrian style home somewhere between here in Kalispell, and Somers.