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

It’s Eric Forti’s birthday…he may not be blogging but we have this special wish for him!

One of my favorite winter events is the Canteen on the Fly that we will be doing for the third time this year!  Since canteen is one of the favorite hang out spots at Camp Canadensis, we take the concept on the road, and set up gatherings at ice cream stores in communities where we draw a lot of families from.  We love seeing our current campers, new campers, and even people who are just interested in hearing more about Canadensis at these events.  ALL of us from the winter office are there, so it’s a great chance to get to know us better.

Check out the super cute graphic for the event (if you click on it, it will enlarge)!  I’ll hope to see you there in October!

I love finding Canadensis car magnets around town! This car was spotted in Blue Bell, PA on September 27th… who wants to claim their car?!

Here I am again in the winter office, summer 2011 still fresh in my mind and real as can be. I’m still not 100% back in the “off-season” mode yet- it’s still warm outside and feels like we should all be running around camp, wondering what was in the box! As I do every year, my first blog post after camp is always a collection of some of my favorite summer pictures! So, without further ado…

Well, that’s a pretty good representation of my summer in pictures. Stay tuned for updates about life in the off season, and a very special welcome from those CITs 2012!

Here is another photo of the Camp Canadensis Crew on our recent trip to Maine.  Even while riding the bus, we stick together…at the front!

This week I was fortunate enough to take a trip with some of the ‘Canadensis Crew’ pictured above.  From left to right – Director Brian Krug, Assistant Director Pam Levi (me!), Girls Head Counselor Robin Forti, Director Eric Forti and Owner Neil Sukonik.  We attended the American Camp Association  “Residential Camp Conference” which takes us each year to visit the facilities of many of the great camps in the Northeast.  This year, we took the trip all the way up to Maine, and we got to share ideas and learn from other camp directors while taking in the sights of some beautiful campgrounds.

All of us at Canadensis love to collaborate with other camp directors – we think it strengthens us as a movement, and helps make the Canadensis experience better for our campers and families.

When we got into Maine, we had a little bit of downtime in Freeport near our hotel, so we explored town and found an incredible bakery “When Pigs Fly” – seriously, go check it and and order some of the most incredible bread ever! –  www.sendbread.com – We also saw the original LLBean which is now a huge store open around the clock.  Here is a photo of Robin and I in front of a huge hiking boot!

Comic Book Blue

Gold Arcade

Hello Canadensis Friends!  This will probably be my last time blogging from up at Camp Canadensis during the 2011 season because I’ll be moving back home to Philly tomorrow.  The plan had been to move back after our Indian Summer/Family Camp Labor Day Weekend, but we lost power after Hurricane Irene and it just came back on last night!  Unfortunately we had to cancel the weekend just in case we were still powerless.

During the 4 days with no power, it was actually really fun at camp!  Some of the post-camp staff taught me how to play an awesome game called “Phase 10” which is kind of like UNO, but takes a lot longer to play (have I mentioned before that I love games!?)  I also got to play some Monopoly with some of the full time staff, and to tell the truth…it got pretty interesting!  Eric and Matt (who run the operations of camp) were incredible during the power outage, they hooked up a generator to the kitchen, so we still had great food, water, and a place to charge our cell phones!

Luckily we had beautiful weather during the day – so during down time it fun to ride bikes or go for walks, but at night it was totally dark.  That was when we got creative – one night we had a Domino’s Pizza party for all the staff in Health Center (also hooked up to the generator) and I ended my nights reading by candlelight – it was great, and I finally finished the two books I had wanted to read all summer.

The best part of the power outage was that we had time to get crafty!!  A big project that I started (and will likely finish in pre-camp next year) is refinishing some chairs and “camp-ifying” them!  I found these awesome chairs up in our warehouse, and they are super sturdy with great bones, but they needed some love:

After unscrewing the seat cushion, I spent time cleaning off the years of dust, and stripping whatever paint I could remove.  Then I got the spray paint out and covered the chairs (and my hands!) with a fresh coat of blue.  Now, the truly fun part was recovering the cushion!  These chairs will be in our Fabric Art program once they are finished, so I originally thought to take fun and different patterns of fabric from the fabric closet, but then Cara had the great idea to use Canadensis T-shirts!!!  I cut the t-shirts up so that they were flat squares, and I used a staple gun to attach it to the cushion before screwing it back on to the wood.  Here is what the finished project looks like:

Even Annie approves of the new chairs!!  I hope this inspires you to get crafty!  If you have any “Canadensis” themed crafts that you’d like to share, please send them my way!