Home Visits: Pennsylvania Girls

I got to visit a bunch of Pennsylvania girls in one week!  My first first visit was with Mia, a current 3rd grader who will be a Junior Girl at camp for her first summer.  Mia and I have a lot in common – we both live in Philadelphia, we both have little sisters, and we have the same birthday!!  I first got to meet Mia this summer when she came up to take a tour, but I know a ton more about this awesome new camper now.

First and foremost, Mia is a swimmer!  She is in the pool 4 or 5 times a week practicing her strokes, and getting even faster in the water.  She knows how to do all the strokes, and she loves swimming in the pool, lake, ocean…or whatever you’ve got!  She’s about to get even better soon because she’ll have a new snorkel, which is a great tool that will let her work on stokes without having to come up for air!  She goes to Friends Select School, and their mascot is the Falcon.  Mia also goes to dance classes every week, and Sunday school on the weekends.  She likes being up on stage, and has played a bunch of roles, including Mouse #3 in a school show, and Munchkin #5 in the Wiz.  She suggested that we do Hairspray at camp this summer…wouldn’t that be fun?She and her little sister Maddie gave me tours of their rooms.  One of my favorite parts of their rooms is that they both have doorbells to ring when you want to come in!  Maddie has bunk beds, and tons of stuffed animals and “lovies”.  Mia has a very tall bed, with a “cove” underneath for hanging out, and she showed me her very neat desk.  We looked through a special photo book her mom made with photos of family and friends, and it will be the perfect thing to take to camp and show friends.  Mia has started thinking about her camp bed, and will definitely plan to have a Selena Gomez poster hanging up, with peace signs everywhere, and her favorite colors of purple and blue.  She loves blue so much, that she even wants to be on the blue team for Color War!  As I was leaving, the girls changed in to super cute furry pajamas that not only covered your feet, but covers hands and has a hood – it will be a really fun item to have at camp for sleeping/dress-up/and more!

The next night, Brian and I went to visit with Brandon & Brittney in Newtown, PA.  Check out Brian’s blog for all the details about Brandon…but keep reading to hear more about his oldest sister!  Brittney is a current 2nd grader, and will be a Lower Junior Girl at camp for her first summer.  If she could plan her perfect summer, she would want to be on the Gold Team (her favorite color), she’d want to be in Girls Bunk 3, she’d want to sleep until 1PM and she’d want to play soccer everyday!  I got to meet her and her siblings at camp this summer when they came up for a tour.  They happened to be at camp on the first full day of Color War, and as we were rolling around the grounds on the golf cart, we saw a lot of Canadensis campers searching for the “Hidden Indian Head”.  This is a Canadensis tradition where teams follow clues and search for a hidden version of our mascot.  Brittney and Brandon got really excited watching the action, and they can’t wait to search for it this year!

Brittney is a “sporty” girl, she does after school activities including soccer and gymnastics.  She told me that her best gymnastics trick is doing a backwards spin on the uneven bars.  She loved the trampoline at her old day camp, and she’s excited about our trampoline track & foam pit in gymnastics.  She is also really looking forward to climbing the wall, playing tennis, and she plans to spend most of her elective periods enjoying the lake activities and toys.  She likes just about everything, but she is not planning to be in the camp show – just like me, we are a little shy in front of the crowd!

We looked through the Canadensis photo album together, and she did a great job reading the descriptions on each page.  She is a good student, and her favorite subject is math.  She had great questions about how she’ll find her bunk mates (she will find out on the bus to camp, and then she will look for the counselors holding her bunk numbers poster) and she wanted to know if there were any kids with her exact name at camp.  She is a complete original, but she said that she might go by the nickname “Brittster”, because a lot of her friends call her that.

The night after that, I hung out with Avery & Reid in Bryn Mawr, PA.  Avery is a current 2nd grader, and will be a Lower Junior Girl for her first summer at camp.  I first met her at Tour & More Weekend this summer, and it’s going to be so fun to have her at camp for the full summer!  When she got home from the trial weekend, she told her mom “Why wouldn’t I want to go for the full summer??  Camp is all about fun, and it’s a party every night!” – isn’t that one of the best quotes you’ve ever heard?!  The first thing you need to know about her is that she is a well-rounded girl that likes everything…but her Arts & Crafts work is extremely impressive!  She gave me a tour of some of her ceramics projects and painting, and I can’t wait to see what she creates at camp this summer!  /she also really like sports – some of her favorites are soccer, tennis, and she’s even started to play field hockey!

Avery’s favorite colors are yellow and green, and she already has a yellow squishy pillow that has “Canadensis” airbrushed on it for her camp bed this summer.  She has a very organized room, and her favorite area is the desk that she has set up with a a cute photo of her dog, and trophies – and boy does she have a lot of soccer trophies!  Avery and I share the hobby of knitting, and it’s a very popular club at her school!  We talked a lot about camp, and she had great questions about clean up jobs, and how we celebrate birthdays at camp because her is in July!  I told her that birthday girls have a few surprises during the day, but the whole camp sings to them, they get to make an extra phone call home, and they can have a pizza party with the bunk for dinner.  They also get to be on the Canadensis Today Show, and parents can send up a package with gifts.

This is a photo of me, Avery, and her adorable dog Piper.  She usually goes by the nickname “Ave”, but she might also want to be called Cookie…but even though she really likes cookies, ice cream is definitely her favorite dessert!  She also likes cake, but not icing…it’s too sweet for her, so if I were you, I were one of Avery’s bunkmates,  I’d try to eat the icing she’s leaving on the plate!  Her brother Reid is a current 4th grader, who will be a Lower Inter Boy for his second summer at Canadensis.  Reid has told Avery a lot of important stuff about camp, but the number one thing she is looking forward to is the waffles, ice cream and berries that we serve for breakfast on the 4th of July!  Reid stays super busy during the year, mostly playing hockey!  He plays roller hockey and ice hockey, and he’s in the rink a few nights every week.  He told me that his favorite school subject is P.E., and he also is excited to be back at camp so he can play with his friends on The Summit (in the lake), get involved with the baseball leagues, and play more CHL (Canadensis Hockey League) games.  He also can’t wait to be with bunkmates, and see some of his great counselors from last year…including Adam “Sausage” Shrager…how he got that nickname is a story for another day!