Camp is starting in just over a month, but before heading up to the Poconos I have a few more amazing first time campers to introduce you to!  Kylie is a current 2^nd grader, and she will be a Lower Junior at camp this summer!  She is from Villanova, PA and goes to the Baldwin School.  I first met her when she slept over at camp for the Tour & More Weekend last year, and it was great to get to know her better!  Here’s what you should know about Kylie:

• She loves dogs!! I met her dogs Harley and Hannah (she named her after “Hannah Montana”) and she has 5 chihuahuas I didn’t get to meet!
• Her favorite color is blue, and her second favorite color is purple.
• She likes to go skiing, and before coming to camp she’ll be summer skiing in Mt. Hood, Oregon.  She’s done big slopes in Colorado before, and since she’s good on ski’s she should have no trouble learning to waterski!
• Kylie really likes to play soccer, and on the night I visited she had just made a soccer travel team for the fall!
• She loves to dance!  She goes to dance classes several times a week and her recital is coming up soon!
• She’s a good eater, and likes all of the basic vegetables (like cucumbers and carrots), but tomatoes are a “no go”!
• There are SO many reasons she is excited for camp, but she can’t wait to have such a late bedtime! Campers her age usually turn in around 9PM – which is much later than a typical school night at home!
• Gymnastics will be her number one elective choice, and dance will probably be second!  She also likes basketball and is a good swimmer.
• She has cousin that are also coming to camp with her.  Her older cousin Skye has been a camper for a few years, and told her all about the fun activities…including cooking and the summit!
• We went through her schedule and she was excited for just about everything the Lower Juniors get to do!
• She’s all ready for Color War and dressing up – she has tons of spirit and can’t wait to show it off for whatever team she’s on!

I also recently spent some time in Ventnor, NJ getting to know another new camper.  JT is a current 4^th grader, and he will be a Lower Inter at camp this year.  He’s been attending JCC Camp By The Sea (day camp) for the past few years and he’s very excited to try overnight camp and the tons of new activities we have in store for him!  Here’s what you should know about him:

• He’s really likes archery, and is excited to get to do it frequently at camp this summer!
• He also likes riding his bike and electric scooter, so he’s excited to quads and Hondas!
• He likes horses, and might decide to take horseback riding lessons this summer at camp.
• Although he’s never tried it, he thinks he’ll really like the rocketry elective, woodworking with the bunk and all the boating activities at the lake.
• He also plays sports, like baseball and basketball.  He’s looking forward to trying new sports at camp, like tennis and lacrosse!
• On the day I came to visit, he had just gone on a field trip and gotten a copy of the American Constitution – he joked about hanging it up on his wall at camp!
• There’s a lot of action is his house, so he’ll be very comfortable with a lot of people in his bunk!  He has an older sister (she does travel camp every summer), and on the night I came to visit I met him and 4 other people who were around.
• He’s a stylish guy – likes his button down collar shirts, and he’ll look great on dance nights!  He’s also very excited to grow his hair long at camp because it’s against school policy during the year.
• He’s a self described “class clown” and likes to make people laugh.
• He tends to wake up really early in the morning…like 6AM!  We talked about the many things he can do with that bonus time, including writing letters to everyone at home!
• His favorite food is chicken fingers, and he loves corn!  Can’t wait for him to try “Cornman” on Open House!

And…I also wanted to welcome one more “new comer” to Canadensis.  Dave Malter is the Director of the Touro University Masters in Camp Administration and Leadership program, and while this is technically his 5th year coming to camp, it will be his first year on staff!  Dave and I have been dating for years, and in his former career as a day camp director, he was only available to come to Camp Canadensis for weekend visits.  Maybe you’ve seen him around camp, helping in the canteen or walking Annie?

Well, this year he’ll have a more formal role at camp and it’s time to officially introduce him!  Dave will be going on trips with our amazing (and HUGE group) of 50 CITS!  He’ll also be helping Robin Forti with tours and the Tour & More programs.  He has a very impressive camp resume, and over the years he’s learned a lot about resident camp.  I’m so excited for the Canadensis family to get to know him better!

This will be my last blog from the winter office – on Monday I’ll be moving up to camp!  I can’t wait to see so many of you at Open House on June 1st!  I can’t wait to have all our Canadensis campers arrive for the summer…seeing you get off the bus is the BEST feeling!

Can’t wait for us all to be reunited!  Like Upper Inter Girls Bailey, Jordan and Ilana above on a recent trip to NYC!

My family lives in Arizona, which means on my past several trips out to visit, I swing by the universities and recruit some great students to come join our staff team!  Three years ago, I met Alex Entrikin at the University of Arizona campus, and I cannot wait to give him a 3+ Year Staff Shirt this summer as he returns to camp as a Group Leader again!  It was great to catch up with him at In-N-Out Burger!

And now there are just a few more weeks until the start of camp, and that means we are finalizing the summer program and hiring a few last staff members to join our awesome summer team!  After spending time with my family to celebrate Passover, I went up to the Northern Arizona University campus, and in the photo above I’m posing with the camp display!

On campus, I got to meet up with some of our great staff from prior summers…including Rylie Backus (summer 2012), who is about to graduate!

And I also got to see Kiersten Bolt & Emma Celoza (from summer 2013) and it was great to catch up!

And while walking around at the South Street Spring Festival, I bumped into Lisa Eckenrode (summer 2013) spreading the word about the Metro Kids Club where she is currently working.  This was our second Philly run in this year!

I’ve also gotten to see some of our awesome campers!  Including Shaina (left, will be a Lower Inter for her 2nd year at camp) and Sierra (right, will be an Upper Inter for her 2nd year at camp).  They are holding up canvas frames with pictures of their bunk from last summer.  They decorated them at recent bunk gatherings…and I love the blue and gold colors they chose!!

And I also got to see their bunk mates Lindsay (left, will be a Lower Inter for her 2nd year at camp) and Anna (right, will be an Upper Inter for her 3rd summer at camp).  The girls are modeling our new camp sweatshirts with jersey applique that will be available for Careware purchase at camp on Open House day and Visiting Day – the girls love them, and describe them as “yummy”!  (Btw, their mom was the one who came up with the awesome canvas frame project above!).

Here’s a close up view of the sweatshirt…I’ll be wearing mine often in pre-camp when I move up after Memorial Day!We love seeing pictures of your camp run-ins too!  Above is a photo of 4 Canadensis Campers – from left to right we have:

Ashton (Upper Junior Boy), Jared (Lower Junior Boy), Max (Freshman Boy) and Jordyn (Upper Inter Girl).  It will be Jared’s first year at camp, but everyone else is returning for their 2nd, 3rd or 4th summer!

Our camp forms were all due on Friday (May 9th, 2014) – but I recently saw this sign at a Walgreens…they’ve partnered with the America Camp Association (we are an ACA accredited camp!) to provide parents with an easy way to get medical forms done.  Consider it for Summer 2015!

And finally…I wanted to share with you some awesome custom signs that just arrived for camp!  Can’t wait to see these hanging at camp this summer!!

• Jamie takes three dance classes each week – ballet, hip-hop and jazz.  She loves to dance!
• Jazz is her favorite and she also really likes that teacher.
• She has two dogs, named Cody and Dixie.  She also has a guinea pig in her room named Pebbles!
• She’s lucky to have a pool in her backyard and learned to swim when she was two years old.
• She’s the youngest of 4 siblings.  We got to meet her older brother Jackson, and she also has two older sisters.
• Her favorite thing about camp is being with a lot of people her age.  She just loves to be in a group!
• She likes to do a lot of stretching, and she’s flexible!  She showed us how easily she can do a heel extension.
• She’s really into nature activities, and tried to encourage her family to build a fire pit in the backyard that they can use for s’mores.
• Right now she’s even working on a ceramics project at school that has chocolate and graham crackers marshmallows on a plate, because she loves s’mores!
• She has a beautiful voice, but she didn’t sing for us.
• She likes to play tennis and is going to take tennis lessons this summer.
• She has a huge family and lots of cousins who live in Israel. She’s been to visit Israel three times…but has only been to New York once, even though her dad works there every day!
• She really enjoys sleeping late and will staying up with anyone else in the bunk is awake!  (I better warn her counselors…)
• She loves Arts & Crafts, and will keep her clothing super neat…she has a folding board where she likes to practice folding T-shirts!

• She is a gaga champion!  Last summer she was called “Lady Gaga” after winning first place at her day camp!
• She loves activities that start with S…including soccer (she plays midfield), softball, and sewing!
• Her family has a fish tank in the house, a fish pond in the backyard, and while we were talking we saw a deer wander into her backyard – it felt like we were at camp!
• She had heard a bunch of rumors about camp…like that there are alligators in the lake, and that only boys can use the slides in one of the pools…so I’m glad I got to tell her that those were all wrong!
• She is an amazing rainbow loomer (and I’ve seen a lot of loomers!).   She showed me all the stuff that she made, including charms of smiley faces, bracelets with the flag of countries on it, and tons of awesome stuff like snakes and dragons – she figures it all out herself!
• She loves 1Direction, and Zayn is her favorite!
• Her favorite color is gold, and she’s only won color or one time at day camp, but it was when she was on the blue team!
• She is a big sister to her brother, Zachary (he’s also a good rainbow loomer!)
• She likes to write stories, including ones for her brother.
• She likes to sing, and has been in shows before like Peter Pan. She thinks that she will try out for the play this summer!
• At her most recent birthday party, they played “camp games” that her mom (a big time camper) organized!  One of the party games was like “Miss Canadensis”, where the boys got dressed up like beauty contestants…but I won’t tell you the winner was!
• Her mom makes really good cookies…and Sam is already excited for some on visiting day!
• She had great packing questions, and has already got soccer socks and personalized camp stationery ready to go!
• She is a really great artist, I loved seeing all of her projects and ceramics!
• She goes to classes at the Handworks Studio, and has sewn pillows, bags, a stuffed animal scarf, a crazy monkey, and is working on a skirt!
• She also goes to Hebrew school and likes her to teachers.
• For her electives she wants to do gaga, needle art, glass fusion, and ceramics…sounds like some fantastic choices!

Next up is Ali, a current 3rd grade who will be an Upper Junior Girl at camp this summer!  She lives in Plymouth Meeting, PA, and was at camp last summer for the Tour & More Weekend.  She’s been up at camp at bunch of times visiting her two older sisters on Visiting Day as well.  She’s the youngest, and she can’t wait to spend the entire summer at Canadensis this year!  Here’s what you should know about this awesome girl:

• She is really good at cleaning up, and is going to help her bunk win honor bunk prizes this year!
• But, she’s also a “pack rat” who loves to collect things!  She just got bunk beds in her bedroom, and they are covered with stuffed animals!
• I’m serious…there are too many stuffed animals to count in her room!  They are on her bed, in her closet…even her trashcan is a stuffed animal!  But there two extra special ones that will be coming to camp with her: Beary Bow and Hershey.
• She loves being in the 3rd grade, and has the best and nicest third-grade teacher.
• She loves to dance!  She spends a lot of her time on the weekend rehearsing and going to dance classes, and is on a competition team.
• Last summer she spent a few weeks at a gymnastics camp. She learned how to do flips (which she can do into swimming pools!) and was hoping she could do it off the balance beam into the foam pit at camp!
• Really excited about all the lake activities, including the summit.  She wants to ride the banana boat as often as possible!
• Despite having the shortest legs, she is the fastest of the girls in her family!  The counselors are going to have to try and keep up with her!
• Ali can be very adventurous.  She’s done some really wild rides at Ocean City before, but she thinks she’ll go in a slower group for Dorney Park.  What she’s really excited about is trying to find and to win a huge stuffed animal…especially if it’s a Snoopy so it can hang out with the other ones on her bed!
• Her family just got an adorable new dog named Ozzie!
• She suggested that on the first day of camp, I should have Annie (my dog) spray-painted blue and gold to welcome everybody to the summer…so funny!
• She loves to talk and chat…and she loves the color purple!
• She played lacrosse this year, but didn’t really like it once the ball hit her in the face! But, she’s ready for all the activities at camp!

 

In the photo above, you can see all of Ali’s sisters!  On the left is Jenna, a current 6th grader who will be a Freshman Girl for her 4th summer at camp!  She is really excited about all the changes for Freshman, including cooking as an elective, the perks of being on the Hershey trip, no more instructional swim, and a couple of late morning sleep ins!  Jenna is a really sweet big sister, and she knows how hard it can be to go away for camp each summer…and she’s so caring, and gives great advice!  It was fun talking about some of our favorite camp memories, including going on the summit with Annie and the makeover of Coach K a few years ago!

On the right is Kylie, a current 4th grader who will be a Lower Inter Girl at camp for her 2nd summer.  She went through major depression when camp ended last year…her mom said you didn’t want to be around her for a whole week!  She would be ready to get on the buses to Canadensis right now, so luckily there are only 85 days to go!  She really loved being on the camp competition dance team, and she told me how much fun it was to paint Annie’s nails last summer.  She having a good time “ruling” the school this year, and she’s looking ahead to some great new elective choices for Lower Inters, including quads, ceramics wheel and the Canadensis Today Show!

I look forward to seeing both of these girls on Sunday, along with ALL OF OUR NEW CAMPERS at Rebounderz for New Camper Bouncing!  It’s so much fun introducing all the awesome new kids I’ve met this year, and watching the new friendships form.  Plus…we are going to do a ton of bouncing!  Can’t wait to flip out with all of you…I’ve loved bouncing since I was a kid (check out the throwback above from when I was 10 on a family trip to Israel!).

• She really loves to dance!  She is taking hip-hop and jazz classes right now, and she likes her jazz song best “Popular Song”.  Her hip-hop song is “Party in the USA”, which is one of my favorites!
• Julia also just finished her basketball season.  Her softball season is about to start, and she plays in both the fall and the spring and she plays all different positions.
• She obviously very active…but does not like running on grass, so soccer is not one of her favorite sports!
• She also goes to Brownies, and they get to do crafty projects.  Last year they took a really fun trip to Build a Bear.
• Her cousin Hannah lives in Florida, and is also coming to camp with her for the first time this summer.  They both did Tour & More Weekend last year.
• She started learning to play the violin this year.
• Her room is decorated with photos of her teammates, along with all of her trophies.  She hopes to start earning big ones like her sister!
• Julia had too many teddy bears to count on her bed, and she likes to stay up late.  It’s very hard to wake her up in the morning sometimes – the counselors might even has to jump on her bed!
• She just started reading the Harry Potter books about a month ago and she is already in the middle of book four…but she might already be on book five by now!
• Her day camp last year went to see Matilda on Broadway so I told her about all the different trips Junior girls go on (camping overnight, movies and Dorney Park!).
• She will probably want to be on one of our competition dance teams just like her big sister and choose dance as an elective.
• Her favorite color is pink and she is known as the LOUD one in her family!
• She and some friends dressed up like a “nerds” for Halloween, and she showed me the costume in her closet in that’s almost completely filled with costumes!

The next night, I went to Merrick, NY, and got to spend time with Jared, a current 3rd grader who will be an Upper Junior Boy at camp this summer.  He did Tour & More Weekend in 2012, and I was totally impressed with how much he remembers about camp!  He’s a super active guy who really loves to play sports, so his counselors better have a lot of energy to keep up with him!  Here’s what you should know about this all-star camper:

• His favorite sports are baseball and basketball.
• He plays on a flag football team and also plays roller hockey!  I told him about the Super League (more competitive optional leagues for campers) and he thinks he might want to be in the CFL (football), CHL (hockey) and CBL (baseball) leagues, but he has time to decide!
• Jared is also really excited about the lake activities and the summit (climbing wall & slide in the lake).
• We went through the camp schedule, and talked about Special Days on Thursday, and he thought it all sounded like a lot of fun!  He’ll have no trouble sleeping until 9:30am on the late mornings!
• He’s looking forward to the camping trip, and might want to spend a night in the backyard to get ready before camp.
• He doesn’t like fish, and won’t eat tuna fish, fish sticks, or anything fishy…but he will try fishing as an activity!
• He’s really excited for the glass fusion program, and will probably choose that for an elective.
• Jared has a razor motorbike that he loves to ride, so he’s going to be really fast at learning how to ride the Quads and Hondas.
• He also likes mountain biking, and has gone on hills at the Norman J. Levy preserve.
• Both of his parents went to camp and Jared is a total camper!
• His dad played lacrosse in college but he hasn’t tried – maybe he’ll give it a go this summer?
• Blue is one of his favorite colors, so maybe he’ll be on the blue team for Color War!
• He’s really smart, understood everything we talked about and had wonderful camp questions!

Jared’s big brother had some friends over during my visit, including Ben Negrin!  Ben is in 6th grade, and is going to be a Freshman Boy at camp this summer – and he’s getting his 5 year jacket!  Very exciting!!

I also got to see Tim Hatcher – our Digital Photography specialist.  We can’t wait to have Tim back for his second summer.  I met up with him on the Hofstra University campus, and then I got to spend some time getting to meet his awesome and creative friends who also want to work at camp this summer.  It was wonderful to see him, he can’t wait for summer!!

See you soon!!!

• She recently went on an awesome family vacation to Israel, and her favorite part of the trip was going in the Dead Sea and doing the hikes in the desert.
• She plays the violin at school and takes piano lessons at home!
• She goes to gymnastics once a week.  She’s on level 6, but has never been on a competition team before.  I definitely think she would love being on our gymnastics team this summer!
• She’s also a pretty good swimmer, but does not like doing flip turns because the water goes up her nose – maybe we can teach her that at camp!
• Hannah remembers a lot of fun stuff from the Tour & More weekend, including hanging out on the platform during free play, and going on the banana boat in the lake and holding on the longest!
• She’s about to be in a play at school and her role is “Camper Sam” – and she has a little brother named Sam!
• Her dad is a photographer (that’s why the photo above is so much better than my usual iPhone images) and she plans to sign up for a photography elective this summer!
• She’ll be doing just about every art elective…ceramics wheel (like her Bubbe), art shack, and more!  But, she is also very interested in the cheerleading elective.
• Hannah dressed up as a devil for Halloween this year, but she’s totally sweet!  However, I was warned that she likes to play practical jokes like losing her tooth…and she can cry on command!
• She collects snow globes from all the places her dad travels and keeps them in her room.
• She’s an avid reader who loves the “Percy Jackson” books, and just started reading the “Real Mermaids” series.
• Her favorite color is neon orange and she has a gymnastics leotard that color…I told her to bring it to camp and I’m sure she’ll find some crazy reasons to dress up and wear it!