I’m so embarrassed by how long it’s been since my last blog!! I will definitely be posting a lot in the next few days because I’ve met so many incredible new female campers in February and early March…Girls-Side 2011 is going to be the best yet!

I wanted to quickly post this picture I took when Camp Canadensis was at the Philadelphia 76ers last week, it’s a snapshot of Camp Canadensis Girls-Side of the Future! All of these adorable faces belong to siblings of current campers…all of the girls are in 1st or 2nd grade, and I had a really fun night hanging out with them during the game.

Hello Everyone!  I really need your help!

I want to start a new blog segment that will run every Monday, and it’s based on my favorite memory from summer 2010.  One day before any of the campers arrived, I was working in the pre-camp office with Cara Corradetti, and when she picked up her guitar to entertain us during a break, pure genius came out.  She wrote a song for my dog Annie, and called it “Annie the Dog”.  Check it out…

BeckyJ was also working with us in the pre-camp office, and Jason “JCal” Calabretta came up every weekend, so we all started to add verses to the “Annie the Dog” song during the weeks before camp started, and now we want to bring YOU in on the fun! This summer we’ll be making an “Annie the Dog” music video, and we want your help!

It’s very easy to do…each Monday, I’ll post a cute photo of Annie and you can add your rhyming lines as a comment below. Here is the photo for this week…Annie on a hike in Arizona

From JCal: Annie the dog on the hiking trail…
Annie the dog opening the mail

From Cara: Annie the dog hiking a mountain,
Annie the dog sips from a fountain!

From Pam: Annie the dog, walking on the trail…
Annie the dog, just a-wagging her tail!

From BeckyJ: Annie the do walking on the trail
Annie the dog learning braille

With the Snyder Girls – Sabrina on the left and Sage on the right.

Let me start off by wishing a very HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Sage Snyder!!  She is turning 9 years old today, and I got to spend some time with her yesterday – and I saw the birthday presents and cupcakes all stacked up!  Sage is currently in 3rd grade, and this will be her first summer at Camp Canadensis, in the Junior Girls division.  As soon as she gets off the bus at camp, she’d like to go by her nickname “Sagie”.  Her big sister Sabrina Snyder (who will be at camp for her 3rd summer in the Upper Inter Girls division) has been telling her a lot about camp and getting her excited!  Sage definitely plans on being in one of the camp shows, she is pumped to go on the zip line and high ropes course, she can’t wait for the trip to Dorney Park, and she thinks that the hypnosis show is going to be one of the best evening activities!  She does a ton of activities during the school year – including gymnastics, Hebrew School, hip-hop dance, soccer during the fall and basketball during the winter.  She’s even taken voice lessons!

Sabrina was so helpful on the home visit – it was almost like she works for camp!   The Snyder girls plan to do “sister time” during the summer – she and Sage plan to write some letters home together, and to spend time in each others bunks getting ready for the big dances.  I’m sure they will miss their adorable dogs Buster and Trixie while they are away, but they have so many fun things and friendships to look forward to!  Sabrina sees her Bunk 6 – 2010 friends a lot, and they have a big sleepover party coming up!

With the Segal kids – Haley and Sam

Recently, I also got to spend time with another new Junior Girl – Haley Segal!  She is currently in 1st grade, and she will be in Girls Bunk 2 this summer (NOT Boys Bunk 2!!)  It’s a funny ‘camp quirk’ that we have at Canadensis, we don’t have a Bunk 1, so most of our youngest campers start off in Bunk 2!  Haley reminded me that she had a birthday before camp, so she will be 7 years old when it starts, and she is totally ready to do all the activities we have at camp…especially art!  She takes art classes at Handworks, one of the projects she made was an incredible crochet snowflake – I told her that crochet was one of my favorite hobbies too!  Haley has two dogs named Hobie and Dexter, she likes to ice skate, she has been practicing writing good letters home and believe it or not…she loves to eat salad!  She is excited for the COALS camping overnight trip – especially the s’mores for dessert!  She is a good climber, so she’ll climb up our rockwall with no problem, and she’s great at gymnastics too – she can even do tricks on the high bar!

Haley is an alumni of camp, which means she has family members who have gone to Canadensis before her.  Last year, her big brother Sam Segal (currently in 3rd grade) was in Boys Bunk 3, and this year he will be back in the Junior Boys division. Their dad Alan Segal also went to camp, and showed me some of his alumni photos during the home visit.  Because so many Segals have gone to Canadensis, Haley has some awesome vintage Canadensis gear.  Check out the photo above where Haley and Sam are holding up t-shirts that are nearly 30 years old!

Also, check out the photo below of Sam in front of his house.  He has the largest hill in front of his home, he can actually snowboard down it!  I call it the “Segal Ski Slope” and I would be way too scared to go down it, but Sam says it is super fun.

Sam traded his Phillies t-shirt that he liked to wear during the summer for a much warmer Phillies sweatshirt!

So, sticking to the blog topic of ‘birthdays’…I’m looking forward to the upcoming weekend!  I’ll actually be spending it in Manhattan to celebrate my favorite person’s birthday.  We’ll be going to a concert and out to some great restaurants.  On Saturday, we’ll be going to Max Vorcheimer’s Bar Mitzvah!!  His birthday isn’t until February, but the Bar Mitzvah celebration this weekend is similiar to a birthday – he is celebrating becoming a man!  Best of luck to Max, can’t wait to celerbate tomorrow!

I can’t imagine a world without hobbies!  I love spending my time crafting, cooking and playing games…many things that I first learned at camp are hobbies that I try to do whenever I get free time.  I’ve blogged about some of these hobbies before, but at the top of the list is the game of MahJongg.  I have taught a lot of people how to play, including the CIT GIRLS of 2011 who are awesome players!  I’m in the process of teaching a group of women who live in the Plymouth Meeting, PA area, and the organizer of the group is Heather Brucker – mother to David Brucker who will be a 2nd year camper in the Lower Inter division this summer.

This is a photo of David and his younger sister Marissa (who might be doing the sibling Tour & More Weekend at camp this summer) helping me setup the MahJongg tiles so I could teach everyone how to play.   It takes a little while to learn, but Heather and her friends are doing great – and our second class is in just a few hours!

While I was over the Brucker household, David and I compared camp photo albums.  This is a picture of him holding the t-shirt covered camp album I made a few weeks ago, and I’m holding the book his family put together of the many photos he was in this summer.  The pictures are incredible!!

Another favorite hobby of mine is crochet, and this is a great activity to do during the winter because you can make things to keep you warm!  I love making blankets, hats, bags, rugs, and anything I can create with my crochet hook…I’m not the best at following instructions, so every time I make something it turns out different and unique…kind of like snowflakes.  I will upload more photos soon…

This is a blanket I made for one of my friends who had a baby boy – I love teaching campers how to crochet too, and I’m hoping it catches on Canadensis this summer!

This is an ear warmer that I made in an hour…just in time to wear it for New Years Eve!  I attached a cute bow.

Another big hobby of mine is playing around with Photoshop.  The best part about this hobby is that I get to use it at work to create marketing materials like postcards, brochures and more.  I just finished working on this awesome photo of Callie Goodman who was a freshman girl at camp last summer.  It was the perfect picture to announce that we are going to the Philadelphia 76ers game on Tuesday, March 1st (email pam@canadensis.com to reserve $30 lower level tickets).  Of course it’s a funny photo because Callie is a funny girl!

I’ve also made about 10 other postcards…including this one featuring 2011 CIT Boy, Matthew “Chipper” Jacobson and Rachael Liberman captures all the spirit of camp during Color War!

In addition to spending time doing my favorite hobbies, over the next few weeks, Brian, Eric and I will be visiting a lot of homes.  We’ll be trying to see every new camper for 2011, and help get them excited for the summer of their life!  I’ll be making a trip to Long Island this weekend, and even seeing some campers on Martin Luther King Day, so I’ll have a lot of new photos to post in my blog next week.  Until then…Think Camp!

I grew up in New York and I had a love/hate relationship with New Jersey for most of my life.  My Mom was born and raised in New Jersey and I was thrilled that my Dad was the one who made the final decision that we would be a New York family.  Throughout my childhood, we would often debate whether the beaches were better in NY or NJ and we’d  discuss the lack of good bagels in NJ on our visits to my Mom’s parents…

In recent years, I’ve started to see the positive sides of New Jersey!  I actually lived there for a few months after Hurricane Katrina when I was evacuated – I was lucky enough to be offered a great job at the Margate, NJ JCC as a Youth Director during the time I couldn’t live and work in New Orleans.  I also must admit that I love watching “Jersey Shore” on MTV and I even spent the most recent snow storm in New Jersey.  I was in an area that got 34 inches of snow – it was crazy!

This is how high the snow was…my feet aren’t even on the ground, and I’m very tall!

That’s my car…it was almost hard to see it!

One of the ways I entertained myself while being snowed in was by cooking!  I made these happy looking peanut butter banana waffles.

Here is video of Annie (my dog) running in the snow!

I also like New Jersey because we have so many awesome campers from there!  One of the newest Canadensis campers is Lilly Checkoff from Cherry Hill!  She is in 5th grade which means she will be an Upper Inter and this will be her first Summer at camp.  She already knows a lot about Canadensis because one of her closest friends is current camper Amanda Seligman and her father actually went to Canadensis when he was 13 years old.

Lilly is a very sweet and very busy girl – she goes to dance class twice a week, and Hebrew School.  She also likes to snowboard and ski and she loves the beach during the summer.  She hasn’t tried waterskiing yet, but since she’s a good skier I’m sure she’ll be able to get up quite easily at camp this Summer.  She likes playing tennis, but is an all-around camp kind of girl and she’ll be excited to do all the activities…even basketball!

On the nights when she is not involved with activities, she has a fun bunch of siblings to hang out with.  She has an older brother and a younger brother and sister.  When I was at their house, I got to see a cool shrinky dink project that they had done, and it totally brought me back to the 80’s when I used to love making them with my sister!  The whole family is very nice and active, so please join me in welcoming the Checkoff Family back to Camp Canadensis!

Welcome Lilly Checkoff!

The whole Checkoff Family

So, I feel the need to say “I’m sorry Mom!” – New Jersey is actually pretty cool…plus you’ve gotta love the cheap gasoline that you don’t even need to get out of the car for!

When I was growing up my father worked at a heating company, which means he had incredibly demanding work hours during the cold winter months in New York.  He usually worked all 7 days of the week, and that meant that going on a family vacation during December was out of the question!  Luckily, my mother is a very creative woman, and I still remember all the ways she would find to entertain me and my sister during those long winter days which were usually spent inside.

My favorite thing she would do was take on on a trip to Pearl Paint – a HUGE Arts and Crafts store on Long Island, and she would give me and my sister a budget, and the set us loose in the store – (if you watch project runway, it’s sort of like when they get a budget and get to run around the mood fabric store for 30 minutes to find supplies).  We would come home from the shopping trip with “shrink-a-dinks”, string for friendship bracelets, perler beads and so much more – and it would keep us more than entertained until it was time to go back to school.

Craft projects is still a big part of what I do with my free time.  I’ll be sharing a lot those projects in the months ahead (I’ve been really addicted to making crochet hats and scarves this winter!) but today I wanted to share a Canadensis Photo Album that I recently made…

I took two Canadensis t-shirts and used my sewing maching to make it one bigger piece of fabric:

Then…I wrapped it around a regular old photo album…almost like a pillow case.   I put stuffing around the photo album, so it is really comfy when it sits in your lap…and it’s soft enough to take a nap on, but you’ll be too excited by the pictures from camp to think about sleeping!

And I have a picture of the lovely Kilman Girls holding up the finished product…

Samantha (1st year camper, currently in 4th grade)  and Emily Kilman (3rd year camper, going to be a Freshman!)

I’ll be bringing the album around with me when I do home visits this year, so maybe you’ll have the chance to see it soon!  I hope you have a fun winter break in store…full of crafts, travels, or other things that bring you joy!

I’m sorry that I didn’t blog this past Wednesday – and I’ll be missing next Wednesday as well because I will be out of town!  I’m heading west to Arizona, where my parents live.  I’ll  be spending some time with them in Phoenix, and then taking a road trip to Sedona and Las Vegas.  I’m very excited be in the sunshine, and go on hikes through the beautiful mountains – but I’ll also have the opportunity to meet a few staff applicants who are applying to work at camp this summer!

I have spent a lot of time in Arizona, not only because my parents have retired there, but also because I went to University of Arizona – I’m a Wildcat!  While I was in school, I was in a sorority called Alpha Epsilon Phi (AEPhi).  For all of our Canadensis Seniors that went on the college tour this past summer, I’m sure you still remember your Greek alphabet, and I hope you still wear the adorable Canadensis  Greek tees we gave out!

I was in AEPhi for all 4 years I was in college, and the sorority became a big family for me on campus!  It reminded me so much of camp – there was always a big group of people around, we ate all of our meals together, there were always fun events going on and there was a lot of room to be creative!  I made some really great friendships, and I learned a lot about myself as a leader.  I think being in a sorority has made me a better camp counselor, and I know that so many of the staff we hire to work at camp that are in sororities and fraternities feel the same.

(This is a picture of my and some of my sorority sisters dressed up at a theme party…I’m dressed up as a camp counselor of course!!  Yep, I’m the blonde in the middle.)

Have you heard of Mah Jongg?  It’s quite literally the best game ever invented, and although the game gets a bad rap for being the “Grandma Game”, I play weekly with a group of 20-something women, and I’ve taught boys and girls of all ages.  My favorite place to play Mah Jongg is at Camp Canadensis because you need 4 people to play, and it’s never hard to get a group together at camp.  This past summer, I taught some campers and staff how to play, and I expect it will become an even more popular activity in 2011.   The Super Senior Girls were my all-star Mah Jongg students in 2010, and I hope there will be room for a “mahj” table in their CIT bunk this summer!  The standouts from the staff include Cara Corradetti, Ricky Hohn, BeckyJ and Jason “JCal” Calabretta – who had Mah Jongg dreams the night after I taught him how to play!

“Mahj” is a game that combines decision making, strategy and luck – once you learn how to play it’s a skill you have for life, and it’s a great activity to keep you connected with new and old friends.  If you receive the Jewish Exponent newspaper in the Philadelphia area, look out for an article which quotes me and should be running in this weeks edition!  If you live elsewhere, you can check out the article online – and look for the special Camp Canadensis shout out at the end! http://www.jewishexponent.com/article/22419/

Below is a picture of me and the group of ladies I play with.  I’m also an instructor during the year, so if you are a parent who wants to learn the game, get in touch with me (pam@canadensis.com) and if you are a camper who wants to learn, make sure to come to a Mahj class during free play!

I love corn – don’t you?  It’s one of my favorite snacks to eat all year through, and we sure eat a lot of it at Canadensis!  We have popcorn as a snack option in the canteen, every age group goes on a trip to the Casino Movie Theater to see a summer blockbuster and enjoy popcorn (and ice cream!) and we also have drive-in movies at camp.  Drive-in movies are the best!  Last year, the entire camp voted on what movies they wanted to see and three times during the summer we brought our sleeping bags, pillows and camp friends and snuggled onto the soccer field to watch a movie on the giant outdoor screen!

At Canadensis, we also LOVE the Cornman!!  You might be wondering what the Cornman is, and it’s hard to describe – you really have to be at camp.  The Cornman comes several times during the summer during big events, like carnival – and he roasts the most delicious corn, right in the husk!  Our campers line up to get corn, and top it with an array of different spices…every Canadensis kid has their own special recipe.  I like mine with butter, garlic salt and parmesan!  The Cornman comes from a farm called Our Green Acres – it’s an outdated website, but you can get more information here.

I got my carnival corn and got attacked by the painted CITs at the same time!

We often make popcorn here in the winter office and share it with each other.  Today, I decided to bring in a special treat to share with Eric, Cara, Matt and our special guest visitor Groundhog!!!  I brought in popping corn that was still attached to the cob – I picked it off the stalk on a recent trip to a farm with one of my favorite people.  It was an exciting experiment to put this corn in a paper bag and place it in the microwave and see what happens…unfortunately, my corn went from this on the stalk…

To this in the popping bag…

To this burnt mess that I had to extinguish in the sink!

Oh well, I still love popcorn, and I’m going to try to pop it off the cob again in the future!  I wish that all of your Thanksgiving cooking experiment go better than mine – and I wish you a very happy holiday!!