Brian, Cara and I, joined Matt and Eric up at camp two weeks ago…and our “pre-camp” time is already more than half over. Our awesome staff start arriving for training in just over a week…and then it’s only 18 days until our campers get off the bus, and get into an amazing summer!! This might end up being my last blog for a while…but I wanted to share some photos of what’s been going on up here during precamp!
Yesterday, our new art director, Hallie Dennis, came up to camp to continue planning her amazing Arts & Crafts program for this summer! Her ideas are fantastic, and the projects are awesome!! This will be Hallie’s first time working at camp, but she’s been a Canadensis mom for 4 years, and her children Dylan & Jacob have already been at camp for several years, and this time Hallie can’t wait to be a part of the magic our staff creates each summer! Above, is a sample project we made – it’s crayon art!
And, this is what they looked like after we melted them!
This is another awesome project…it’s a wire sculpture, then covered with masking tape, and spray painted. This is just the tip of the iceberg for all the amazingness going down in the art shack!!
There’s been a lot of nature/animal spottings around camp!
1. There’s been a bird that builds a nest on my tires every night – he’s so fast! I check every morning to make sure there are no eggs before I remove it, but then it’s back again every morning – it’s wild!!
2. One of the girls up her over the weekend found the biggest (and friendliest) butterfly I’ve ever seen!!
3. When heading out of camp the other day, I saw a turtle trying to cross Upper Seese Hill Road…but of course he was going super slow! I was afraid the next car might not see him, so I got out and helped him get across safely!
4. And of course, my favorite animal is Annie the Dog – she had a nice playdate with Aunt Terri’s dog Petey! If Annie had long hair, don’t you think they’d look alike??
The night before Open House, we held a BINGO! night for our pre-camp staff and CITs who were up at camp for CIT Weekend!
It was a ton of fun running the game with Dave & Cara. There were fabulous prizes on the line…including cozy sweatshirts ad triple, double oreos! One of the biggest winners of the night was Brian Krug!!
We had nearly 80 players…so competition was SERIOUS!! Hopefully we’ll have many more BINGO nights in the future!
The next day was Open House, and it was awesome – one of the most beautiful days we’ve had so far! I couldn’t help but snap a picture of that delicious looking cornman corn before biting in!
Loved seeing so many new, and returning campers at Open House!! Including these Upper Inters in the photo above (from left to right…Bailey, Jordan, Ilana & Julie!)
On another beautiful camp day, one of Aunt Terri’s friends snapped a photo of our Rec Hall with DOUBLE RAINBOWS!
It hasn’t been all cornman, BINGO, nature walks and rainbows…it’s been a lot of hard work and prep to make sure this is the BEST SUMMER EVER!! Personally…we couldn’t do everything we need to do in the precamp office without the help of Group Leader, Pete Tarnoff (who is spending his 16th summer at Canadensis!) and Program Coordinator, Theresa Malafronte (2nd summer at camp). They’ve been up here with us, and knocking out task after task…no matter what we’ve got going on each day, they are able to get it done and make it fun!! Above is a photo of Pete counting our staff tees for the special orders…you can barely see him amongst the mountain of colorful staff shirts!!
And finally, speaking of work…whenever we are in the office (from 8:30AM to at least 10PM each night), Annie is right by my side (or, actually Cara’s side…she likes her corner of the office better). She’s putting in the hours too! Checkout this awesome photo showing off her “heart spot”.
And finally…how AMAZING are these new signs you’ll be seeing around camp?!! You’ll get to see them in 18 days!!
