Last week, I went on an awesome trip to Westchester, NY, where I met a lot of ladies who will be spending their summer at Camp Canadensis! My first stop was in Rye Brook, NY, where I got to hang out with Lisa and her girls. Lisa grew up at Camp Canadensis, and will be returning to camp for her first summer on our staff team. She will be the Office Manager this summer, so at some point you might get to chat with her on the phone!
Dylan is a current 1st grader, and will be a Lower Junior Girl. She didn’t get to come up and visit camp this summer, so even though she doesn’t know what it looks like, she can’t wait! Dylan loves to dance, and her favorite is hip hop. She also likes to dress up, and she was wearing a special outfit for me, including a skirt! She loves the days when she doesn’t have gym class, because it means she can wear Uggs instead of sneakers. However, she is excited for all the camp activities…even the sports! She is most excited for swimming, and she was very happy to hear about the new pool we are building. She is going to be celebrating her birthday at camp this summer, and she was happy to hear that she could enjoy pizza party with her bunk on the back deck for dinner!
Madison is a current 4th grader, and will be a Lower Inter Girl. I first met her during Tour & More weekend last year – she was actually my sidekick for an hour, we went around camp and she took photos for the website, and did a great job! She is also a big dancer. She is really excited about the art program and ceramics – she showed me some of the projects she had made, including a super cute cupcake. She loved going on the banana boat around the lake this summer, and she can’t wait to do more lake activities this summer, including the summit. She loves matzah ball soup, and she’s excited that we have it for dinner on Friday night. I can’t wait to see the girls again at New Camper Bowling on March 25th!
My next stop that evening was in Scarsdale, NY, with two sisters who are new to camp this year! They are going to be coming to Canadensis with their Philadelphia based cousins Luke & Sam. Morgan is a current 5th grader, and will be an Upper Inter Girl. She has some prior camp experience, so she knows all about color war and the goofy things we do at camp. Haley is a current 2nd grader, and will be a Lower Junior Girl. She is very excited to go to overnight camp, and do all of the activities!
I met up with them on a night after they got home from ice skating practice. They are on Team Image, which is a synchronized ice skating program – and they practice a few nights a week! They have very cool uniforms that have their name on it – and they both really love skating. They are really excited for the lake activities this summer, and they are glad that we don’t have any age restriction on the motorized water sports – all age groups get to go tubing and water skiing if they want to! They are also really excited for the evening activities – specifically “crazy night” and “minute to win it”.
Morgan has been in a few plays before – she has played a “Grandma”, and she also has played the role of Sharpay in High School Musical. She might try out for the Canadensis camp show, and she suggested that we consider doing Peter Pan. Haley stays really busy, and on nights when she doesn’t have ice skating, she likes to have playdates with friends. The girls recently got back from a vacation to Hawaii – how cool is that?
We hung out with their dog Rosie, and they asked a lot of questions about Color War breakout – I told them how we keep it a big surprise! I also told them about how things work at camp – including the 8AM wake-up time (they were happy about that) and the mandatory 3 letters home each week (we check to make sure it’s happening!). They asked about camp food, so I went through a bunch of camp meals like tacos, cheese-steaks, bbq, pizza, pasta bar, grilled chicken, etc – and they gave almost everything a thumbs up! They do NOT like quinoa though (one of my personal favorites), so I told them they should avoid Miriam’s delicious quinoa salad with crasins on the salad bar, and they’ll be just fine!
My last stop of the night was in Larchmont, NY. Stella is a current 4th grader, and will be a Lower Inter Girl for her first summer at camp. Her cousin Zoe is also coming with her, and she knows a TON about camp already because her mom, Laura, was a camper when she was growing up. I met Stella this summer when she came up to spend the night with Tour & More, and it’s been fun to see her throughout the year at Canteen on the Fly, and now at her home visit! We gave out white shirts to all the campers that came to visit Canteen on the Fly, and checkout the awesome way that Stella styled hers…as you can see in the photo above, she colored her shirt in, and even drew some of her favorite camp activities. She drew the banana boat on the sleeve, because getting to do that on the lake was one of her best Tour & More memories! When her mom was at camp years ago, the lake wasn’t as exciting as it is today – the main thing she remember is the ski-doodle – which was a “merry go-round” that helped you learn to waterski!
Stella is a really fun and sporty girl who loves anything neon! Her favorite sports are soccer, basketball and hockey – but not tennis. She is definitely willing to try and do anything at camp, so maybe she’ll come home with even more favorite sports. She really can’t wait to go horseback riding, and she is very excited to put together an “MTV Night” dance with her bunk – it’s an evening activity that we do every year. Stella has an awesome memory, so she remembered seeing “Graffiti Night” in the camp video, and she’s also excited to get to decorate her t-shirt and glow in the dark!
She does a lot of after school activities, including hip hop dance and Hebrew school. She’s the first kid I’ve ever met that actually like going to Hebrew School!! She gets to walk there with friends, and she has a cell phone she can use to stay in touch with her family. She is already thinking about the activities she wants to do in the future, and she plans to be on the high school track team. She is a great big sister to her brother and baby sister, and since her father is originally from Italy, the family gets to travel there very often! They will be going to visit when she gets home from camp, and she has so many cousins over there to play and practice her Italian with. She gave me a great tour of her bedroom, and showed me her “Nerds” candy blanket (even thought it’s not her favorite candy). Stella must be very sweet because her mom said the mosquitoes love her…we are going to have to make sure we apply the bug spray a lot this summer – we don’t want bites slowing her down on the soccer field!
