Hello Canadensis…

It’s March Madness!  Originally, this saying was created to refer to the NCAA College Basketball Tournament (which I will get to later), but when you are in the camping business, it also means that camp is coming soon!  And, this year at Canadensis, it also means that we have been so busy seeing all of you at a number of our spring events.

First, there was our second Canteen on the Fly on Sunday, March 7.  We hit Cherry Hill, NJ as well as Wynnewood and Newtown, PA.  We probably got to see around 60 people at each location.  We were so happy with the turnout of both Canteen on the Fly weekends, which we estimated over 350 campers, parents, staff and friends attended!  Obviously, this is now a new tradition for Camp Canadensis.  Here are some pics from the March 7 day…

The following weekend on Sunday, March 14, Canadensis was so thrilled to help participate in the Jewish Relief Agency’s Passover Food Distribution Drive.  On a day filled with torrential downpours, we want to thank all of the families that came out to help this wonderful cause.  The JRA was an amazing experience as more than 700 people came to help box and deliver more than 2500 boxes of groceries to local low income Jewish families.  For more information on the JRA, please visit their website at www.jewishrelief.org.  Here are some pictures from this great event…

Of course, part of the March Madness also entails seeing some of our camp families.  In Short Hills, NJ, I got a chance to see new camper Sam Hunn and his sister and future Canadensis camper, Lexi Hunn.  Sam, who is currently in the 4th grade, will be a Lower Inter this summer.  At home, he enjoys Biking, Baseball, playing his guitar, Legos and video games.  This summer at camp, he can’t wait to try the Hondas as well as go Mountain Biking.  He is also excited for Water Skiing and the Ropes Course and Zipline.  As for Lexi, she takes Art classes throughout the year and plays the piano.  Here is a picture…

I also made it to Wilmington, DE to meet Alex Felzer.  Alex’s older brother Brian had been a camper at Canadensis for many summer, but now Alex is excited that it is now his turn.  Alex is in the 5th grade and will be an Upper Inter in 2010.  All year, Alex takes tennis lessons.  He just recently finished the season for his 5th grade basketball team.  In the upcoming weeks, he will be involved in the town baseball league.  This summer, Alex is really looking forward to Archery, Hondas and Mountain Biking.  Here is a pic…

Last week, part of the madness meant an annual ritual of professionals in the camping industry.  That is, our winter office headed down to Atlantic City for the Tri-State Camp Conference.

This conference is one of the many benefits we receive being an American Camp Association accredited camp.  Over the course of the three days we were there, we all attended a number of wonderful sessions that dealt with a wide range of camper, staff and parent topics.  All of us walked away with many new wonderful ideas on how to make the upcoming summer even better!  The conference is attended by over 3000 attendees which means we also get to talk with so many wonderful people at other camps.  At the same time, the conference has an amazing exhibit hall, which we walked through several times.  We got great new ideas for camp shirts, games we can play at camp and saw some items that might be fun for camp.  Here was one item, which looked like fun…

And finally, back to the initial reason why the term March Madness was created…the college basketball tournament.  As a sports fan, I find this to be one of the most exciting times of the year because of the drama of this basketball tournament.  As our Program Director always says to me, sports is the original reality TV.  For college basketball, this always seems to be true.  In fact, how many games last weekend came down to the very last two minutes?!?!  So many upsets, too!  Who expected Cornell or Northern Iowa or St. Mary’s in the Sweet 16?!?!  And, how awesome was that game involving Northern Iowa and Kansas.  Amazing!  Our staff has been involved in a Facebook pick’em bracket, who is currently being led by Justin Bruno.  As for me, I think you all know who I am rooting for…SYRACUSE!  Right now, I think I am in 7th place.  We’ll let you know who won.

Until then…Have a great day…Brian

Well everyone, it’s finally looking more and more like camp season every day! Today we’ve got a bright and sunny afternoon here in the winter office, and we’ve been enjoying a few days of warm “summer-like” weather. Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating, it’s not QUITE summer yet, but in the Philosophy of Cara, once you start wearing open toe shoes, it’s basically camp time. So hello Birkenstocks, goodbye Uggs!

I have had a super exciting past few days, from my return from the ACA Camping Conference in Atlantic City, to the Taylor Swift Concert in Philadelphia, to a campy dinner in King of Prussia with the usual crew, and a few special guests. I’ll let the pictures do the talking:

Taylor Swift was excellent, and I know there were so many Canadensis kids in the audience! I was really impressed with how great she is live, and I’m looking forward to playing some Taylor covers on my guitar at a campfire now and then! We saw Taylor on Friday night, and then went back out Saturday to meet up with camp friends for dinner at California Pizza Kitchen, and dessert and coffee at the Cheesecake Factory. Our usual group of 4 grew to 9, which was SO exciting, and definitely made for a memorable evening. We laughed harder than I’ve laughed in a long time, and even played some camp games while waiting for our table to be ready. Laughing with camp friends always reminds me why I do what I do every day, and why I love camp so much.

This week in the office has been “wild” (wild is my catchphrase, according to Forti), and the change of season has definitely put the push on the preparations for summer. The Tri-State Camp Conference got everyone seriously pumped up and we all came home with fresh new ideas, ready to make summer 2010 THE BEST SUMMER EVER!

The 2010 Where in the World Winners are…

1st Place: Alex Ehrenthal

2nd Place: Rory and Jordan Mitchell

3rd Place: Noah and Ben Rubin

4th Place: Greg Ricken

5th Place: Brittany Glassberg

Congratulations to all of our winners! Prices will be announced this summer. Thank you to everyone who participated.

For my final post about the 2010 Where in the World, have a look at the countries I have visited! Amazing, if I may say so myself…

Click here to see the countries I have visited!

At 5:07AM this morning, Eric’s brother and sister-in-law welcomed EMILY BELLA FORTI to the world. Eric Forti is a very proud Uncle!

Welcome EMILY BELLA FORTI!

Since Jaycal is still busy tabulating the scores from Where in the World Round 3, I figured I would do a quick blog entry!

This past weekend Robin flew up and we spent some of the time doing some wedding planning. I can’t write too much on here about the process of planning a wedding since Robin actually reads this and I would get “in trouble” for explaining all of the challenges and differences of opinion, so let’s just say that yes Robin I am so happy about everything we picked out Saturday (sense the sarcasm?) In all seriousness though, it is quite an adventure planning such a big wedding and especially the challenge of it being non-traditional since it’s at camp, adds another element to it. Robin is doing such an amazing job, with the help of both of our moms, at planning all the small details and making sure everything is perfect. We had a great weekend and it was nice to be able to do planning things in person! And yes, we even compromised on the tuxedo that I will be wearing:)

In other news, Sunday was our Canadensis gives back to the community day (I just made up that title, like it?!) and we had approximately 10 families turn out to the JRA event. JRA is the Jewish Relief Agency and each month food is packed up at their warehouse and then delivered to Jewish families who could use a little extra help throughout the month. This month, it was a Passover distribution, which is their largest distribution of the year. As a result, it was MOBBED and so unfortunately there were lines waiting to pack the boxes. Once we got the boxes packed, we all loaded our cars with food boxes and drove over to an apartment building where we went door to door delivering them. Our campers did an excellent job running to the elevators and were really efficient with the deliveries! Thanks to everyone who came out and volunteered their time.

Rewinding a few days back, on Thursday Pam and I drove to L.I. to visit a few families. We arrived a little early (I am neurotic about not being late and one visit a few months ago took over 4 hours to get there and I was so embarrassed to be late!) so we went to King Kullen for a quick Passover aisle shopping excursion. While there, we ran into Renee Press, mother of Abigail and Hannah and she insisted we run over to their house, which was only a mile away and surprise the girls! Pam and I did just that and the girls were so excited to see me and meet Pam (or so I think!). They are both doing well in school and definitely excited for the upcoming summer. If you look closely in the pic, you may see that they are both wearing their Canadensis wristbands and this is proof that people do wear Canadensis all year round! We surprised them, so they had no advance notice to put them on special:)

After our quick visit with the Press Family, we went to a prospective family who is interested in coming to Canadensis this coming summer! Following our visit with them, we went to see the Gilady Family and we had a blast! When we walked in, they insisted on feeding us…there was fruit and bourekas so someone must have told Laura and Dvir that they are my absolute favorite and I haven’t had them in years! They were of course delicious and after eating Pam and I went to the basement with Jaymie and Avery and played some hoops! Jaymie is amazing at basketball and put up a good fight as she was in the lead until the last 30 seconds, but I pulled through and won by 2 baskets! Good job Jaymie and Avery. It was hard work playing 5 minutes of hoops, I am not sure how you all play basketball for an hour on the courts, haha.

Finally, our tour of LI ended with dinner in Hewlett, NY with none other than Grandma Levi. Pam’s grandma invited us to join her for dinner at the Pizza Place (yes that’s the name of the place!) and it was delicious. Sorry, no pics with grandma, but we definitely had fun. Oh and one more thing- after dinner we went to Hewlett Station Yogurt, which is a soft-serve yogurt place where they serve Hewlee’s. A Hewlee is frozen yogurt blended with a muffin. Sounds absolutely gross, I am with all of you on that, but I have to be honest and say it was delicious. After all that eating, we hit the road for a 2+ hour drive home. Luckily, no traffic.

So, back to the present…tomorrow we are all headed to Atlantic City for our annual tri-state camp conference. Thousands of camp professionals all get together down in Atlantic City for a few days of meetings & seminars, purchasing for the summer, and socializing. Of course during socializing time, it’s ALL ABOUT CAMP! So, we will all be talking camp for the next few days 24 hours a day.

In between my trip to Atlantic City, I am flying up to Boston to visit my brother and sister-in-law because there will be another Forti joining the world any hour now:) I am excited to say that I will be becoming an uncle within the next few days and of course I will post a pic or two on here if you all don’t mind!

So a new Forti will be born (gender unknown) and we will post the winners of fabulous prizes for Where in the World all in the next few days…Stay tuned!

Well this is it! I made it back from almost 6 weeks overseas…some headaches, but other than that no fever, no virus, no H1N1, etc. I am healthy!

This time of the year also means it’s time to get into camp mode…Matt Unger will be moving to camp in about 5 weeks and me shortly thereafter. I typically have moved to camp in mid-April, but it’s time for me to pass the torch to Unger. He will do an incredible job at getting things ready to welcome our first precamp group on Friday, April 30th. I will of course travel back and forth between Philly and camp throughout April and early May until I move up, but it’s now Unger’s turn to give it a go! It may sound awesome to be at camp in mid-April, and trust me it is great. Of course most of us would prefer to be at camp than at home. But, let me tell you from experience there is so much more than you can imagine that goes into preparing for summer. The most obvious is turning the water on, which is not an easy task. Throughout Matt’s first few weeks at camp, he will squeeze in time to be a guest blogger and update all of us on what is going on up at camp!

Back here in Philly, Jaycal and I are putting the finishing touches on the Where in the World is Eric Forti recap, some quick facts about the trip, and of course…announcement of the WINNERS! We had more participation this year than ever and it seems like many people enjoyed the twitter. I have a feeling there will be a Round 4 next winter, so don’t despair. I promise though to Robin, who has been so amazing at accepting my crazy schedule, that I won’t twitter/blog while we are on our honeymoon. (Well if you promise not tell on me, maybe I will a little bit!) Speaking of honeymoon, we haven’t figured out where that will be yet. I have traveled to all continents except Antarctica, so what do you think Robin of an Arctic honeymoon?

Getting back to the office has been CRAZY after being out so many weeks. Payroll to run, bills to pay, year-end tax returns to finalize and file with the lovely US government, on top of finalizing the staff for the summer, camper visits, new prospective families to visits, etc. Again, all the best parts of working for a camp year-round:)

Next week, the  office will be closed on Wed and Thurs as we all travel down to Atlantic City for the American Camp Association Tri-State Camp Conference. It’s always a blast, but I will admit I am ready to sleep in my own bed for more than a few nights in a row! We are staying at the Borgata though this year (comped rooms), so I guess I can’t really complain. Someone to make the bed, cook the meals for us, etc!

Well that’s all for tonight. A short blog because I am exhausted. Am I allowed to use jetlag as an excuse still? Have a wonderful evening and I will be back in a few days to announce the winners of Where in the World:)

Yesterday was oodles of fun, as we embarked on the second half of our Canteen on the Fly world tour… well, it wasn’t quite a global tour, but we definitely felt like superstars, arriving in time to chat with our camp friends and families, and then rushing off to make it to our next stop on time.  With yesterday’s unexpected warm and sunny weather, seeing camp friends on such a beautiful day gave us all the feeling that camp is just so much closer.

This is one of my favorite times of the year (other than June, of course, when camp is in full swing) because I FINALLY get to start excavating the large Tupperware containers of spring clothing from storage, and incorporating some of my favorite spring pieces back into the mix.  I’m also very excited to see the new trends for summer, and to stock up on plenty of Blue and Gold apparel.

I’ve  included some of my favorite campy craft projects on this blog before, and in keeping with the trend, here’s a camp creation from Group Leader Ricki Kahn created, and let me share with all of you:

Enjoy this week of beautiful sunshine, and think camp!

Hello Canadensis…

As I write this blog on Friday, I am really looking forward to our second Canteen on the Fly Weekend.  This time, we will be in Pennsylvania and South New Jersey.  Come see us and have some free ice cream!  We will also be raffling off LIMITED EDITION CANTEEN ON THE FLY T-SHIRTS.  Here are the times and locations…

TIMES and LOCATIONS

CHERRY HILL, NEW JERSEY from 12:00 – 1:00 pm
TCBY at 230 North Maple Avenue, Marlton, NJ
(in the Crispin Square Shopping Center)
Store Phone #: 856.983.8229

MAIN LINE, PENNSYLVANIA from 2:00 – 3:00 pm
Carvel Ice Cream at 339 E. Lancaster Ave, Wynnewood, PA
(in Whole Foods Parking Lot)
Store Phone #: 610.642.3665

BUCKS COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA from 4:30 – 5:30 pm
Goodnoe Farm at 4 South Sycamore Street, Newtown, PA
(next to Lukoil Gas Station)
Store Phone #: 215.968.3544

It was a great week once again as I got a chance to see more of our campers when I was in Cherry Hill, NJ.  First, I saw Justin and Lauren Liebman, both who are joining us for their first summer at Canadensis.  Lauren is in the 3rd grade and will be in the Junior Girls Division while older brother Justin is in the 4th Grade and will be a Lower Inter Boy.  When at home, Lauren really likes to Arts and Crafts and she also plays on a Soccer team.  This summer, she can’t wait for all of the activities in the Art Center, but is also looking forward to all of the lake activities as well as the Climbing Wall and Ropes Course, Tennis, Archery and Cooking.  In the fall, winter and spring, Justin is involved with Baseball and Tennis, but also mentions that his favorite game online is Toon Town and plays is frequently.  When he gets to camp, he can’t wait to make new friends and do activities like the Banana Boat and Tubing as well as Gaga, Golf, Fishing, Baseball and Basketball.  Here is a picture…

Also in Cherry Hill were the Schreiber girls, Hannah and Daniella.  In the third grade, both will be in our Junior Girls Division.  Both girls are extremely busy with a number of different activities.  Daniella does Ballet and Jazz Dance, Basketball, and indoor and outdoor Soccer.  She plays goalie on her travel soccer team, the Terminators.  Hannah has started to take piano lessons and also has Hip Hop Dance classes.  She plays Basketball and Soccer as well.  This summer, the girls are looking forward to trying a whole bunch of activities.  Daniella mentioned that she is excited for Waterskiing, Sewing, Rock Climbing, Windsurfing, Banana Boating, Soccer, Canoeing, Gaga and Campouts.  Hannah is can’t wait for Windsurfing, Rock Climbing, Banana Boating, Cooking, Woodworking, Glass Fusion, Camping and Radio.  Here is a pic…

Finally, a completely random topic…is anyone else out there as crazed with You Tube as me?  Sometimes, I can go an hour without realizing how much time has passed watching the most ridiculous videos.  If anyone has something that is funny that I should check out, please e-mail me.

Hopefully, we’ll see a lot of our camp families this weekend!

Until then…Have a great day…Brian

Everyone loves canteen at camp! And, with camp still a few months away, we thought it would be a great idea to bring a little bit of camp to you! Introducing…CANTEEN ON THE FLY!

THIS SUNDAY!

This weekend our winter staff will be making their way to a number of locations (details below) to see you (and eat ice cream)! We are encouraging our camp families to bring along one friend that might be interested in camp for this summer or a future summer. All campers and friends that attend will get FREE ICE CREAM!

If you are a family that is interested in Canadensis for a future summer, we encourage you to stop by as well and meet our directors and staff and meet other Canadensis families.

We will also be raffling off LIMITED EDITION CANTEEN ON THE FLY T-SHIRTS.

We hope to see you there!

TIMES and LOCATIONS

CHERRY HILL, NEW JERSEY from 12:00 – 1:00 pm
TCBY at 230 North Maple Avenue, Marlton, NJ
(in the Crispin Square Shopping Center)
Store Phone #: 856.983.8229

MAIN LINE, PENNSYLVANIA from 2:00 – 3:00 pm
Carvel Ice Cream at 339 E. Lancaster Ave, Wynnewood, PA
(in Whole Foods Parking Lot)
Store Phone #: 610.642.3665

BUCKS COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA from 4:30 – 5:30 pm
Goodnoe Farm at 4 South Sycamore Street, Newtown, PA
(next to Lukoil Gas Station)
Store Phone #: 215.968.3544