Hi Everyone,

I know it’s been a long break between blogs, but I am back! After camp, we had groups that came in to rent our camp. Marching bands, Karate Camps, and schools just to name a few. Matt Unger and I stayed up at camp through the end of September taking care of our groups, along with a few staff members who stayed with us to help out. It was a great postcamp, but there were of course a few challenges. Below is a list of the positives (and negatives) during postcamp.

• Positive- Mariam from the kitchen was our personal chef and made some amazing foods, some of which she will be making for all of you next summer. Some highlights: homemade Spinach Pie (Spanakopita), Potato Bourekas, Apple Slaw, Chocolate Fondue, Zucchini Quiche, Eggplant salads, and much more. It was amazing and after eating camp food for 5 months (how many hamburgers/hot dogs can one person eat!) it was a welcome change.
• Negative- Hurricane Irene, OY! It was terrible. Luckily, camp survived without too much damage. One tree fell in girls camp in between cabins and took down a power line, plus trees down all along the camp road. Aunt Terri’s basement flooded and myself and Matt were down there up to our waist pumping it out! The worst part was NO power for 4 days and we had a few groups there, with up to 300 people. Of course our backup generator kept the essentials going (the food!), but the dining rooms were dark, so we were eating by high powered light torch things. We got most of the water turned back on to camp so the groups had water (some cabins even had hot water through the gas heaters) and all in all they made the best of it. Everyone laughed, had fun, but of course bedtime was early because camp was PITCH BLACK at night. No area lights, etc. The best part was I figured all of the ice cream would melt, so we ate cases and cases of ice cream. Then I realized the generator ran the freezers (OK- that was just a joke!). Do you guys remember the power going out this summer on a Sunday morning for a few hours? Bagels and lox in the darkish dining hall.
• Positive- lots and lots of projects get accomplished. Without having all the campers there, we have days where cabins are empty and we can begin to do maintenance for next year. So, that’s what we did and will continue to do all winter. Can’t tell you some of the large projects just yet, but stay tuned because we will be announcing them soon.
• Negative- NO CAMPERS….BOO. It’s boring being up there without campers running in and out of the office, playing basketball and the ball banging into my office. No waterskiing on the lake, no color war spirit, eating meals in the peace and quiet (did I say that was a negative??!!). Anyway, we missed all of you up at camp.

After camp, I have a tradition where I usually treat myself to a cruise. This year, Robin and I went on a 4-day cruise around the Bahamas with Royal Caribbean and it was a blast.  It gives us both a chance to spend some time together and decompress from a loooonng summer. Remember, there is no such things as weekends from April – September, so it can get tiring! Spent some time with both of our families for the Jewish Holidays as well and now it’s back to the winter office.

I returned here on Wednesday to tons of mail to go through, bills to pay, and some emails about campers who are enrolling!! We will begin our home visits shortly and before we know it, it’s time for the reunion. Actually, as I type this, Pam is finalizing the reunion postcards. We have extended the hours this year, so we have extra time to have fun at Jeepers!

Before the reunion, don’t forget about CANTEEN ON THE FLY! Jcal will post the info on the blog next week, but Canteen on the Fly in NYC, Westchester, and North NJ is on Saturday, 10/22 and on the Mainline, PA and Upper Dublin, PA on Sunday, 10/23. Long Island we are coming to you in mid-November. So excited to see everyone again, although my new diet isn’t excited for 3 ice cream parlors in one day. Robin and I already agreed to limiting ourselves to ONE lowfat ice cream each day and she is going to pack healthy snacks, UGH. An apple vs. Ben & Jerry’s..hmmmm.

This weekend, we will be celebrating the wedding of MIKE LINDQUIST and ALYSSA THIBODEAU so a very big Congratulations to the both of them and we look forward to a great camp weekend up in Massachusetts. What are you up to this fall weekend? Pumpking picking, hayrides, haunted houses? All things I love to do in October (but hardly have the time for these days).

Wishing everyone a Happy and Healthy New Year and look forward to seeing all of you at Canteen on the Fly and our Annual Reunion.

I love arts and crafts – I can often be found in the Canadensis Art Shack during the summer!  I take any opportunity to get creative, and I had a good reason for my latest project.  Two of my very good friends (who are also in the camp biz) recently adopted an adorable new Bernese Mountain Dog named Luke.  I’m going over for dinner tonight, and I wanted to give them a useful gift, so to make a gift like this, do the following:

1.  Purchase or repurpose a nice glass jar.

2.  Fill with useful items – for a dog that means toys & treats!

3.  Top it with a fun ribbon.  This one has paw prints, and it’s an adhesive ribbon so it can be reused for crafts later.

4.  Add a label – this label is actually a chalk board (such a cool item!)

5.  Scribble a note – I know mine is a bit messy, but it’s the best I could do with chalk!

We all know Brian has a certain affinity for concerts; I think I’ve taken a page out of his book and started a little trend of my own. October has been concert month among my friends and I, and it’s been a lot of fun! It started with Vanessa Carlton and Matt Nathanson the first week of the month, and this week I’ve added two more ticket stubs to my collection. Monday night we had a table at World Cafe Live for the Kate Voegele concert (you may know her from One Tree Hill), and last night we saw the Indigo Girls at the Keswick Theatre!

The Indigo Girls may be one of my all time favorite concerts, primarily because we were obsessed with their songs when I was a camper; they’re perfect for around a campfire! With me at the concert were two of my campiest friends- Kate (yes, as in super theatre director 2011!) and Cayla, who spent her whole life going to sleepaway camp. At the end of the encore they played “Closer to Fine” and everyone was on their feet singing along. I taught the song to CITs 2008; maybe it’ll make a comeback this year…

Next week I’ll be making Krug extra jealous as I watch Hanson play in Philly! They’re letting fans vote for which album they should play, and right now Middle of Nowhere is winning! That means I’ll be mmmmmmbopping all night long! For those of you who don’t already know (or haven’t already seen the behind the scene videos) Brian loves to rock out to Hanson in the summer office.

I’m getting so excited to see camp friends this weekend at Mike and Alyssa’s wedding! I’ll be sure to post plenty of pictures 😉

I got such lovely feedback about my last blog post of “framed” images from Summer 2011 at Canadensis, so I decided to make a recurring blog post called “Frame Worthy Friday”.  Here are four more amazing photos from last summer, and check back every Friday for more!

Hello Canadensis!

I hope everyone is enjoying this wonderful Fall weather we’ve been having.  For us, Fall means that it is officially time to start thinking about next summer already.  The cycle starts over!  People always ask us what it is we do when we are not at camp.  Well, putting together the two months we spend with each other certainly takes a lot of planning and preparation and that all begins now.

We want to thank all of the campers of Summer 2011 that completed the online survey as it has given us a good idea of what activities were most popular, what meals were enjoyed the most and what special events were considered great!  The feedback we received will be used in our plans.

Of course, we just announced last week the first of our many off season events…CANTEEN ON THE FLY.  We hope that many of our campers, staff, alumni and future campers will join us for some free ice cream.  All those that attend will receive a T-Shirt as well.  The dates and locations are as follows…

Speaking of plans for the summer, I spoke with magician extraordinaire Brad Henderson today.  He says hello to everyone in Canadensis world and is excited to return in Summer 2012.  Our campers and staff are truly amazed every summer by Brad, through his magic clinics, magic show and hypnosis show.  If you want to see just what I am talking about, you can check out some tricks here:  http://www.bradhenderson.com/multimedia/.  Some great stuff!

As we have just begun to plan for Summer 2012, we’d love to hear anymore ideas and input from you.  If you have an idea, you can e-mail or call us.  Maybe you see something at school or at a bar/bat mitzvah or wedding that might be good for camp.  Let us know and we will look into it.

Outside of camp, things for me have been great, especially since my Giants are off to a 3-1 start this season.  As always, I will be in Lot L12 this weekend if there are any Canadensis Giants fans going to the game.  Haven’t heard much from any of our Philadelphia Eagles fans as of late.  I wonder why?  Ha Ha!  Got to see a great concert last week at the Bergen Peforming Arts Center when I saw Bruce Hornsby.  Many of you might know his bigger hits like Mandolin Rain and The Way It Is, but this guy is one of the most talented musicians and has one of the best bands out there these days.

With the “New Summer” underway, I can’t wait and see many of our campers in the upcoming weeks and months.  More blogging to come soon.

Have a great day…Brian

Last night I got to see our super fabulous theatre director Kate at our annual sorority potluck dinner! We talked about camp as we helped ourselves to some delicious dishes made by our friends, and tried not to totally overwhelm everyone with stories of camp… you all know how that is 😉

Did you know you could follow Camp Canadensis on Twitter? Check out our Tweets here!

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You know when you take an amazing photo, and you decide that it’s “Frame Worthy”?  A moment you want to preserve forever and look at often is deserving of a frame that will only add to the enjoyment of the photo.  There are so many photos like this from the summer (a credit to our amazing photographer LMac), so I wanted to share a few images that I “framed” with you.  Are any of these your favorite summer photos?

Good news campers- I’m an official sushi roller! Over the weekend my sorority hosted a private sushi class at Pod in Philadelphia. I’m sure all my Philly campers can back me up in saying it’s one of the best restaurants in town! We may have even taken a quick lunch break at Pod during the college tour…

Since Pod doesn’t open until 5 for dinner on Saturdays we had the whole place to ourselves! Once all the girls and guests (I brought my mom and my aunt!) arrived, it was time to get down to business. The chef taught us how to make maki sushi (that’s the kind most of you loooove to eat) and hand rolls. He taught us about the ingredients, the process, the different types of fish, EVERYTHING you could ever want to know and more.

After his class it was our turn to give it a try! Everyone put on gloves and got a tray full of all we’d need to make a spicy salmon roll and a California roll. It wasn’t easy at the beginning, but once I got the hang of it I was a pro! When we all finished it was time for the main event- lunch! Everyone sat down to enjoy their creations… I’m pretty sure it tasted even better because of all the hardwork we put in! Here are some pictures from Pod:

After we were full of Sushi we stayed in town for some shopping and the Vanessa Carlton and Matt Nathanson concert… YES CITs 2008, she played White Houses! And YES future CITs of 2012, she played 1,000 Miles! She even started the whole thing off with her newest song, Carousel, which I used on the end of year movie for the CIT Girls 2011! What a campy night!

The next day I decided to put my sushi expertise to the test…

Delighted with my work, I decided to pack my sushi for lunch today at the camp office! I think I may have a new hobby. Back on an old blog post I’d talked about Lauren Berry and I having a dream to own a sushi restaurant… I think we’re on our way! Best of all, this is easier than you’d think! I’m thinking iCan Roll Sushi sounds like a great idea for summer 2012…

Hello Canadensis!

Yes.  Yes.  I know.  It’s been way too long since my blog has appeared on the site.  Maybe it’s because I am in denial that Summer 2011 is actually over!  Ha Ha!

What a great summer we had!  When looking back on the 49 days we shared together, I especially miss the morning line-ups.  In fact, on August 19 (which was the first Friday we had up at the summer office without camp in session), Eric Forti was sure to blast the song “Friday” from his computer speakers to get us all in the camp spirit!  Every morning, I love to see all of camp gather together with the music blasting, the campers and staff dancing and all of us laughing before we begin our activity-filled day.

This year, line-ups became extra special with the weekly announcement of our Camper TAC (Tagged at Canadensis) nominations.  It really made me feel good that each and every week there were so many campers that went above and beyond to help our their fellow campers and counselors.  This summer, 366 TACs were given out to campers!  Amazing!  I also enjoyed the weekly Honor Bunk announcements and getting to learn which bunks won prizes.  Of course, how could I also forget the morning line-up in which I was set up by Steph “Camp Mom” Vorcheimer and Jason “J.Cal” Calabretta who tricked me by announcing the wrong lunch for the day, ultimately causing me to have to jump into Lake Lenape?!?

Once again, our CIT Program was so stellar.  Hats off to our oldest campers that totally set the tone for an incredible summer!  They were truly great leaders and role models to all of our campers.  I can specifically recall a moment during the Color War Sing when all of them gathered together for a picture and I was caught thinking just how truly special this group of campers was in making the summer so great.

Speaking of Color War, WHAT’S IN THE BOX?!?!  Ha Ha!  The build up to Color War break was great this year with the mystery of what was in the box that sat on the amphitheater for several weeks before it mysteriously disappeared, leading to a multitude of fake breaks, including what has been called the “best fake break of all time” when the CITs entered camp on a bus to see all of camp screaming and yelling for Color War to begin!  Camp still had to wait a bit longer for our annual competition to begin though.  And, when Color War finally did break with the help of the entire camp, the five days of Blue vs. Gold was extremely close, especially with a Sing that was determined by all of two points.  Congratulations to Comic Book Blue in capturing this summer’s victory!

With all of this, there is still so much more to reminisce about such as our first ever live broadcasts of the Canadensis Today shows as well as the Color War Sing or the two astounding camp theater productions of “Aladdin” and “13” or even the wonderful special event days like the Scavenger Hunt, Survival of the Fittest and Revolutionary War Day just to name a few.  I also think about all of the campers that progressed in activities like Hondas (where we now have so many campers that ride clutch bikes), Mountain Biking (including all of those campers that learned how to ride a bike at camp this year) and Woodshop (the projects this summer were some of the best we’ve ever seen).  The sports leagues this summer were also filled with so many close games that came down to final moments.  The new triple dare at the lake was a highlight for not only me, but so many campers and counselors!

Just thinking of all this makes me want to fix myself a big plate of Waffles and Ice Cream!  We can’t wait until we do it all over again in about 275 days!

Of course, the winter will bring us so many opportunities to see each other again.  Our winter reunion will be in early January, our Canteen on the Fly events will be in October and November in select areas and this fall we will also have several Senior Summit meetings to hear from our older campers on what they think should be brought to their program.

And, I am going to make more of an effort to make continual updates to my blog.

Have a great day!

-Brian