2011 Winter Concert

December 3, 2011 | 7:00pm Bisceglia Family Annual Christmas Concert
Atkinson Memorial Church, Oregon City
$10 per person/$40 per family at the door

Mark your calendars for our annual Christmas concert, held this year in the beautiful historic Atkinson church in old-town Oregon City. Warm your heart to the Yuletide season with a Celtic Christmas!  A community craft fair will be open until 6:00pm, so come early and browse the booths before settling into an evening of music, comfort and joy with the family.

Happy Birthday Bilbo and Frodo

Fall is here and along with basement cleaning, ripe plums, orange pumpkins and ripening pears comes the birthday of Bilbo and Frodo Baggins. For the seventh consecutive year we baked a cheesecake in memory of the story that has impacted our lives forever.

 

This year Kathrina made coconut cheesecake with chocolate topping. It was (notice I say was) delicious! Hopefully by this time next year we will be watching a trailer for the Hobbit movie!

Huckleberries!

While we were on a hike...

...out to Hidden Lake

 We decided that we wanted to pick some fresh huckleberries.

 The problem was, we didn't exactly know which ones huckleberries were...

We gazed at the different berries, and even sampled a few. Then we asked another hiker, but the berries he told us were huckleberries, tasted woody and sour!

As we went along the road we looked and tried some different types.  And then we found one that looked like a blueberry and tasted like a huckleberry! Hurrah! We started filling our bag...

We had several people pass by and ask us what we were picking.  I heard one person comment to her group "Those people knew what they were doing - they came prepared to pick huckleberries".

 I felt that we had progressed rather quickly from novices...

 to experts!

 We put them on our cold cereal the next morning.

They were delicious!

Bisceglia Tour Tip #2: If it don't taste like a huckleberry, it ain't a huckleberry, so don't go trusting yer feller hikers too much.

Animals In The Parks

The big deal at the national parks is the bears. You aren't supposed to feed them, you should buy bear spray, be cautious, don't run, make lots of noise when hiking to scare them off etc. etc. We must have followed the last instructions pretty well, because we saw almost no wildlife while we were hiking! It was a bit disappointing...

After one of our hikes we took a boat ride back to our car and someone pointed out the bear on the hill right above the lower treeline. Can you see the little black dot up there? It was a bear, but we could barely claim to have seen one...

We decided to make the best of it by enjoying the other animals we saw, like this a marmot and ground squirrel at Glacier.

A deer feeding in a meadow at Glacier.

A Mountain Goat

We saw most of the amazing wildlife right out our car window. (I guess our our noise couldn't scare them off that way.) Here are some Big Horn Sheep we saw along the road side at Yellowstone.

The elk seemed to like the watered green lawn around Fort Yellowstone...

A Pronghorn!

Elk crossing the Yellowstone River. We did get to see a little sparring between two male elk!

 We saw a herd of bison grazing - and Dad and Noah decided to get dangerously close for a better photo.

 Then we all saw one closer when one crossed the road in front of us, taking its own sweet time.

 We never did see a bear up close in the national parks, but driving between them we noticed a bunch of cars pulled over to the side of the road. We pulled over as well and discovered it was a mama black bear with her two cubs! They were so cute!

Now at least we can say that we saw a bear...

Tour Tips from the Bisceglias #1 - To sound educated, say "bison" instead of "buffalo". We actually don't have an buffalo in America.

Vistas of Northern Montana

The Montana landscape was incredibly lovely. It seemed there was a calendar-worthy photo at every viewpoint.

 Flathead Lake

 Hidden Lake

 The alpine landscape around hidden lake was beautiful. Apparently it is very much like the alps in Europe!

 Krista drew, sketched and painted every chance she got.

 St. Mary's Falls

 Mom bought a flower book and identified many of the flowers along our path!

 St. Mary's Lake - it is almost as blue as Crater Lake in Oregon!



Hayden's Helping Hands Benefit Concert

We came home to find the disk of photos from our Hayden's Helping Hands (haydenshelpinghands.com) benefit concert in the mail. Special thanks to Chris D. for taking them for us! It was a lovely concert - we hope to do it again sometime and raise even more money for assisting families with the medical costs of a stillborn baby.

The entire family on stage together.

 Noah is joining us on about half our music now. We are thrilled with his growing talents!

Since we had a gorgeous ten foot grand piano in Classic Pianos recital hall, I insisted that Sarah play a piano solo!

We were delighted to be able to offer raffle items to further benefit HHH. They included a gift certificate to Harmony Road Music, a gift certificate to Eagles Golf, a hand made clay bowl by Cindy's Hummingbird Pottery, a massage gift certificate from Orthopedic and TMJ Physical Therapy Center, a gift basket from Stamp-a-dee-do-dah, and a gift basket from Providence Medical Center.

Whispering Roses with Noah on the limberjack!

If you haven't seen the limberjack live, you need to come to one of our concerts!

Since I made Sarah play a piano solo, she decided that I needed to play a harp solo.

I played the bodhran (Irish drum) for the first time at this concert!

A huge thank you to all who showed their support by attending the concert and donating to the cause.

Vortex

A vortex is an unexplained scientific phenomenon where people shrink and grow, balance is upset, and some scientific laws do not hold true!

 Can you see the difference?  The person on the right is closer to the center of the vortex.

 The "House of Mystery" provided many amazing tests of balance as we had to lean in to the off-set gravity of the vortex.

Do you believe it?  It was fascinating!

Hike with Friends

We were very grateful to spend the first day in Glacier National park with our friends, the H. family. They took us on one of their favorite hikes. It was so much fun hiking together!

 A beautiful glacier stream.

 We look like a large group!

 

 We had lunch by this lovely lake.

 Noah had some great "boy time" with David and Timothy, while we girls enjoyed looking on...

The scenery was breathtaking!