Future Camper on Board

It’s about that time to officially announce to the CK blog world that my husband, Jim, and I are expecting our first baby! Baby Hansen will arrive mid-January… our “due date” is January 19th if you are interested in the specifics! I think it’s so funny that doctor’s pick A DAY that the baby will arrive… I’m pretty sure that the baby (in communication with my body) will decide when the time has come to take the journey out into our world, and isn’t aware of the date circled in red on the calendar in our house. But, as January rolls around, I know we will be counting down the days to the 19th so that we can meet this little someone, face-to-face.

The process of becoming a mom has been enlightening. Of course, it is bizarre watching my body change and morph as this tiny guy or gal (it’s a surprise) grows. But it’s also amazing – who knew skin was that stretchy? My stomach is where now? That bubbly feeling is the baby moving? Holy cow! I also get hungry very quickly. It seems as if I’ve just finished one snack and am off looking for what’s next to feed me and the other human I’m growing. But those are the little things.

Accepting my new limits has been difficult but necessary. I’ve always been an “I can” kind of person; just ask my parents and they’ll recall that time 7-year-old me and my 9-year-old sister moved couches and televisions to make more space for our Legos and Barbies. The old me does yoga, goes running, and spends lots of time outside… and then is off to the next task without a break. Now, I get winded walking up a flight of stairs; doing simple gardening chores and bending makes me exhausted; getting up too quickly from laying down feels like I just ran a 5k race. “A little bit at a time,” I have to remind myself. Chores that used to take an afternoon now have to get broken down over several days if they are really going to get done. And I have to ask for help in doing them. Luckily, Jim has been up for the task and is really supportive and great about helping me (and reminding me) to slow down.

I’ve also seen my priorities change as I ask myself “what’s really important here?” I drive slower. I find myself being a lot calmer and taking more time to decide how I’ll react in the face of a situation that might have annoyed me before. The choices I make are not just for me, they are for me and my child.

Not surprisingly, this experience has given me a whole new outlook on camp. I think of how every one of our camper’s parents went through what I’m going through now: shifting priorities and accepting change to welcome a new person into their lives. Years later, they’ve now come to the point when they make the very big decision to hand over their child to someone whom they have never met and ask them to take care of that child. Whoa! That’s a big deal. We are asking parents to trust us, and we have to deliver on the promises that we make to those families.

The fall is the time of year in the camp office when we get to think about what we’re promising, intentionally plan the work we do, and prepare for following through and doing an even better job than we’ve done before. How do we do it? Well, we’ve got our meeting to go over feedback and brainstorm how we’ll put those suggestions into action in the planning and preparation for 2012. We’re already organizing our Leadership Team and hiring counselors. From there, we must take those fresh-faced staff members and train them in our CK way of working and playing. We teach and model ways to keep kids safe, physically and emotionally. We have a strong philosophy and we share it and talk about it so that everyone buys-in. That way, no matter what set of counselors a camper has, they will be provided a similar experience to everyone else, while being free to celebrate the unique differences that each individual brings to their bunk group.

I look at all we’ve done already, and plan to do, to fulfill the promises of a CKNJ experience for the 2012 season, and I’m excited for our campers and their parents. And to see where we are now and know that I have a future CK camper is awesome! All the hopes I have for him or her, and the benefits I know camp will offer, are really endless. I wonder who will be my child’s first counselor… it could be someone who is starting camp for the first time this summer as a “freshmen” camper! The cycle of camp continues!

Teri

Our 200th Blog Post!

It seemed not too long ago that we barely knew what a blog was, much less did we imagine that blogging was something we'd be doing as part of running our summer camp. But here we are, writing our 200th blog! Congratulations to us, and particularly to you, our readers. If you'd like to take a trip down memory lane, here's the index to our archive.
Our first entry was Jeremy's welcome to the CK-NJ Blog on Monday, March 17 2008. On that day we had just returned from our annual trip to the Tri-State Camp Conference and were entering the most intense phase of our year-long preparations for another summer camp season, our 18th. Blog topics included Chicken Dance Elmo, our announcement tree in Madison, staff assistant orientation, snowboarding, website problems, international counselors, and the first of our annual April 1 blogs. 2008 was also the summer of our weekly blogs from the corn field. Little did everyone know that this would be the last of 18 summers at our original Hackettstown, as we announced in our September 12th blog that we were moving to a new camp home at Blair Academy.

We blog for two reasons. First, we hope that what we write makes camp more fun for our campers, staff and parents. There are aspects of camp that not everyone sees and this is our opportunity to share all of that. Second, writing the blog makes our jobs more fun. We love what we do and it's fun to come up with creative and interesting ways to tell the amazing story of our camp. So thanks for reading (particularly if you've read all 200 blogs).

To help commemorate this blogging milestone, I thought I'd share some of the camper artwork that is on the walls of our year-round office (using blue tape, of course). These are fun reminders of summer days past and more great times to come.

Tom