Check out this article about Assistant Director Pam Levi in the Jewish Exponent!

I love corn – don’t you?  It’s one of my favorite snacks to eat all year through, and we sure eat a lot of it at Canadensis!  We have popcorn as a snack option in the canteen, every age group goes on a trip to the Casino Movie Theater to see a summer blockbuster and enjoy popcorn (and ice cream!) and we also have drive-in movies at camp.  Drive-in movies are the best!  Last year, the entire camp voted on what movies they wanted to see and three times during the summer we brought our sleeping bags, pillows and camp friends and snuggled onto the soccer field to watch a movie on the giant outdoor screen!

At Canadensis, we also LOVE the Cornman!!  You might be wondering what the Cornman is, and it’s hard to describe – you really have to be at camp.  The Cornman comes several times during the summer during big events, like carnival – and he roasts the most delicious corn, right in the husk!  Our campers line up to get corn, and top it with an array of different spices…every Canadensis kid has their own special recipe.  I like mine with butter, garlic salt and parmesan!  The Cornman comes from a farm called Our Green Acres – it’s an outdated website, but you can get more information here.

I got my carnival corn and got attacked by the painted CITs at the same time!

We often make popcorn here in the winter office and share it with each other.  Today, I decided to bring in a special treat to share with Eric, Cara, Matt and our special guest visitor Groundhog!!!  I brought in popping corn that was still attached to the cob – I picked it off the stalk on a recent trip to a farm with one of my favorite people.  It was an exciting experiment to put this corn in a paper bag and place it in the microwave and see what happens…unfortunately, my corn went from this on the stalk…

To this in the popping bag…

To this burnt mess that I had to extinguish in the sink!

Oh well, I still love popcorn, and I’m going to try to pop it off the cob again in the future!  I wish that all of your Thanksgiving cooking experiment go better than mine – and I wish you a very happy holiday!!

Thanksgiving has finally arrived! For those of you who follow my blog, you know how I look forward to all the festivities surrounding Thanksgiving, and my belief that once it arrives life should be nothing but nonstop celebrations until after the Camp Reunion in January. Dani and I stayed up late last night baking cookies for our Concert Choir Party tonight, so here’s a few pictures from our funny night:

Dani was napping, but Leo said "Wake Up!"

Once he got her awake, Leo insisted on learning how to make cookies...

This was only ONE set of cookies... we made over 200!

We still have lots to do before the party tonight, but I’ll be sure to post some pictures next week. Although I have a firm stance on NOT leaving my house on Black Friday (too crazy for me!) I will venture out to have dinner with some of my favorite camp friends who are home from college for Thanksgiving Break! This is the longest we have gone without some sort of camp dinner so it’s easy to see how excited we are to see each other. We might even play some Mah Jongg…

It was great seeing so many of you at Canteen on the Fly! For those of you who missed out, here’s a look at the cool tee shirts you saw me, Pam, Robin, and Aunt Terri wearing:

We Love Ice Cream!

I made mine on this cool Peace Sign Tee, while Pam’s got printed on a neat two tone tie dyed shirt. Robin went with a classic gray tee, and Aunt Terri chose a lovely white long sleeved swing tee. We looked pretty awesome, if I do day so myself…

…anyways, I hope everyone has a happy and healthy Thanksgiving, surrounded by all the family (and camp friends!) you love.

What a weekend I had! It started Saturday with our final 3 Canteen on the Fly events. We traveled to Goodnoe Farm in Buck’s County, Pennsylvania, Ray’s Diner in Plymouth Meeting and to TCBY in Cherry Hill, NJ. It was a great day and a lot of fun seeing new and returning campers come out for some ICE CREAM!

After Canteen on the Fly we all headed over to Justin Liebman’s house where BUNK 6 was having a Reunion. Below are a bunch of photos from their reunion. They even had their own t-shirts made up for the Reunion! It was great seeing all the boys of Bunk 6! Shout out to Andy, Sam, Ryan, Justin, Eric, Zach, Jonathan and Bradley!

Then on Sunday, Myself and Matt Unger  headed down to our nations capital, Washington DC to visit JCal and Sam Ginsburg. We had such a great day exploring the city and eating! Please watch the new Today Show from November 21st if you haven’t already to hear more about our trip and Canteen on the Fly.

Sorry for the short post but more coming soon.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving!

-Eric

Check out this cool Time-Lapse video shot from the tech booth the day of the Color War Sing!

Tomorrow the Camp Canadensis winter office will be attending a full day seminar, so I won’t be able to stick to my usual Wednesday blogging routine!  I just wanted to say a quick “hello” to all my faithful readers (if there are any…) and tell you that I’ll be back with an awesome blog post next Wednesday right before Thanksgiving!

To hold you over until then, enjoy this photo from Canteen on the Fly last weekend!  It was INCREDIBLE to see so many new and old Canadensis families, and we are looking to part two this Saturday in Bucks County, Norristown and Cherry Hill!

Here is a photo of me, Cara and Robin rocking our ADORABLE Canteen on the Fly shirts that Cara made!!  Yes, she made them using the screen printing machine from the art room at camp – super impressive!

Hello Canadensis…

I was down in the Plymouth Meeting office the past two days, which is a nice change of pace.  If you don’t know, I actually work most days out of my office (also known as my home) in North New Jersey.  But, I usually make the trip down to to our Pennsylvania once a week, sometimes twice.  However, last night I crashed at Pam’s place in Philly.  She has done a great job renovating her new place.  It looks great!

I hope everyone had a great weekend.  Got to a few more Black Crowes concerts over the weekend and had a great get-together with all of our Giants tailgate friends at Griffin’s in Cresskill, NJ…http://griffinrestaurant.com.  Owner and Chef Peter is part of our tailgate.  With an away game, he made us a tailgate at the restaurant.  A lot of fun!  Dylan Carruba and dad Rich, who live close by, even stopped by to say hello.  Of course, the game was great as the Giants really beat up on the Seahawks, 41-7.  Sorry, Marshall Weinstein.  Up next…the Dallas Cowboys!

Isn’t it funny how camp friends sometimes meet up in the most random places?  In fact, I got a great picture last week from the Stu Minion, father of Zach, Josh and Danny.  During teacher’s convention in New Jersey, the Minions decided to plan a quick family trip to Washington, DC.  Apparently, the Liebman Family (campers Justin and Lauren) had the same idea.  Coincidentally, they ran into each other.  Here is the pic…

Bunkmates Zach Minion and Justin Liebman "bumped" into each other while on separate family trips to Washington, DC. Here they are at the Museum of Natural History.

On Monday, Pam and I got a chance to spend some time with the Lehrer Family from Merion Station, PA.  Ben, who is in the 3rd grade, will be joining us in Summer 2011 as part of our Junior Boys division and his sister, Talia, will be coming to camp in a future summer.  In the fall, winter and spring months, Ben is very active in a variety of activities including baseball, sailing, skiing and building model rockets.  He also has a work station in his basement, allowing him to build a number of different projects.  He even built a doll house for his younger sister!  Sister Talia likes soccer, swimming and playing on the playground.  Both enjoy playing with their two dogs, Oliver and McKenzie.  This summer, Ben can’t wait for water skiing, the ropes course, the Summit on the lake and rocketry.  Here is a pic from our visit…

Me and Pam with Ben and Talia Lehrer and their dog, Oliver.

Finally, I hope everyone is able to join us on Thursday and Saturday for our first two rounds of CANTEEN ON THE FLY.  Thursday we will be in Long Island and Saturday in New York City, Westchester County and Northern New Jersey.  Here is the info…

HOPE TO SEE YOU THERE!

More blogging later…Have a great day!

-Brian

Just a few days ago I was sitting at the table with my mom and looking over our calendars for the rest of the year and realizing just how quickly the rest of this year is going to speed past. Dani’s fall drama, Witness for the Prosecution, is only two weeks away from opening night, I’ve got weekends filled with glorious Canteen on the Fly events, and my mom’s QVC schedule will have her up at all hours of the day and night! Once again hitting the family calendar is the Concert Choir Thanksgiving Eve party, for which we spent some time last night starting to discuss the details, which may involve me spending two days baking dozens of cookies… anyone want to come over and pretend like we’re cooking at camp?

We realized that this past weekend would be the ONLY weekend between now and the end of the year when one of us didn’t already have plans. So, we made the official decision to take our weekend of opportunity and make the trek up to Syracuse University, to see camp friends and check out the campus. The drive was only about 4 hours and we armed ourselves with extra large coffees and snack bars in the car. When we finally arrived in Syracuse we were greeted by a very excited Rebecca Waxman, who graciously let us stay with her for the evening! We unloaded our duffels into her super cute dorm room, and quickly got ready to go out to dinner. We returned to the parking lot as Rachel Dender and Brittany Kahane jumped out of the car to greet us. After lots of hugs we loaded our cars and drove off in to town. We had a reservation for Habachi and had a delightful time snacking on sushi appetizers as our entrees were grilled right in front of us.

Girls Night Out in 'Cuse

After dinner we went to the Carousel Mall to see “Due Date”. The Carousel Mall is the SAME mall we visited while on the Super Senior/CIT College Tour this summer. As soon as we stepped inside I was overwhelmed with memories from the trip, specifically the hours we spent in that very mall, searching for the perfect gift for our “Bigs” or “Littles”. We had great seats for the movie, and it was quite funny, although by the time it was over I was definitely exhausted! We drove back to campus, parked my car, and took off on foot to explore the campus.

Posing!

Once our fabulous walking tour commenced it was definitely time for bed! We rolled out our sleepover mats (some very famous Camp Celebs have enjoyed the infamous sleeping mats when visiting our family!) and had long life chats until we fell asleep. In the morning we woke up and met Brittany for breakfast in the dining hall. The girls told us all about school and their big plans for the rest of the semester, and we also made some plans to get together over breaks, and perhaps take a trip to visit some other camp friends!

Yum Yum!

Often times we hear from prospective families who learned about Camp Canadensis because they have family members that have already attended camp, and that got me thinking…

I was lucky enough to grow up at an overnight camp with my sister and some of my cousins, and by going to camp together, we became more than family…we became camp friends.  We knew the same color war songs, laughed at the same camp jokes, and yes…sometimes we even shared some of our contraband candy that had been sneaked in a letter from home.  Instead of my parents only getting three phone calls home, they would strategically plan our phone calls so that they were hearing from me or my sister almost every week!  (My phone calls were never that great because whenever I’d pick up the phone I immediately had to use the bathroom, but that’s a story for another time…)

For relatives that live miles apart, attending the same sleepaway camp is also a way to bring families together.  Visiting Day in July can turn into a family reunion picnic on our beautiful Lake Lenape!  Moms, Dads, Aunts, Uncles, Grandparents and younger siblings all in attendance.  In 2009, I had one of the best weekends of my life when I threw a family reunion at camp, after the summer had ended.  I’m lucky that my extended family is fun bunch of people, and they were all excited for the opportunity to eat camp food, make s’mores, play sports and tie-dye!

Below is a photo of me with some of my female cousins at the Family Reunion campfire…

Just in case any of them read this and don’t like the photo, I thought I’d include this next photo too because they are all beautiful women who grew up loving their overnight camp experience…

These next few photos were taken during Visiting Day at camp in 2010, and are just some of the many wonderful familes we have at Camp Canadensis.