Hey, Fans of Everything Summer Camp!

Almost exactly one year ago I posted about the manager of our Shipping Department and longtime employee of 11 years, Ryan. I told you all about what his job entails and how proud he is of the work environment that he’s established with the crew in Shipping—the camaraderie that they’ve formed.

Ryan works as hard as or even harder than what he expects out of his shipping crew and he’ll even sacrifice his sports radio to give his crew the morale boost of their varied musical choice. From Country to Kansas to Michael Jackson, the Shipping Department is always a hoppin’ place in the summer.

But today, we’ll delve a little deeper to get a picture of what Ryan’s life looks like outside of work. We won’t have to look too far since he lives just a mile away from the workplace here at Everything Summer Camp. A local resident of Boyd, Ryan lives with his lovely family: his wife, Stephanie, and their beautiful three-year-old daughter, Kaylee.

Ryan is originally from the nearby town of Cadott and even admits that, due to its closeness, he still commonly thinks of it as his hometown, despite the fact that he and Steph found their place and moved to Boyd a whole seven years ago.

Ryan’s little family enjoys annual visits between his parents as well as his parents-in-law. They often have get-togethers with Ryan’s extended family for holidays like Christmas and the Fourth of July. And, of course, Ryan enjoys his everyday life at home.

An avid (and rather skilled) golfer, Ryan is big into sports, closely following any of the major ones. He’s also hired on each season to be the coach of The Hornets, Cadott’s high school basketball team which he thoroughly enjoys.

As for Steph, “she doesn’t have any hobbies besides spending my money,” Ryan laughs, quickly following his statement with an eager, “No, no, no! Don’t put that. It’s just a sick joke!” Between being a devoted mother and loving wife, Steph squeezes in her commute to her job in Eau Claire, Wisconsin at Sacred Heart Hospital.

When Ryan’s not busy at work, coaching, or spending quality time with his family at home, he somehow finds time to play roles in such films as Remember the Titans and The Notebook.

Thanks for reading, Camp Fans!

- John

Hey Camp Fans!

Throwback with us once again to another Throwback Thursday Blog post in which we link back to a past post that we feel is so valuable we want to get its information in front of you again. Today’s Throwback post goes back to a post from last year in April, written by Dr. Thurber about keeping in touch with your kids during their camp stay.

This post prepares you for a couple weeks without seeing your kids, talking to them on the phone, or even texting them! Take Dr. Thurber’s advice on today’s Throwback Thursday Blog post.

- John

Hey, Fishing Fans!

If you love fishing then you’re sure to love today since it’s Go Fishing Day! Today is meant to be spent fishing and nothing else! So pack up your poles and tackle box; today encourages you to get some time off from your everyday and go catch a fish in the closest body of water you can find—be it a small, splashing stream or a rough, raging river.

Most people who go fishing enjoy it. It’s hard not to as it typically offers a quiet and peaceful setting out on the water or a shady shore. I fondly recall my first fishing trip at Crowduck Lake in Canada. It’s relaxing, recreational, and rewarding!

 Fishing is in our bloodlines as it’s been practiced and taught continuously on down through the ages; so—whether you’re fishing for your dinner or for a relaxing afternoon—you’re doing something ancient when you cast your line!

 But ‘ancient’ doesn’t even BEGIN to properly illustrate how old fishing is! Fishing is real old, like PREHISTORIC kind of old. Long before the ancient Egyptians caught Perch and Tilapia in the Nile, Stone Age cavemen caught fish. This is in what’s called the ‘Paleolithic Era’. It was around 40,000 years ago.

Of course, THIS ancient of modern man did not have the means (nor the brainpower) of constructing a fishing pole, so the act of casting is not 40,000 years old, but the act of hunting seafood is. Early man relied quite heavily on the seafood diet, using a large ‘fish hook’, carved from bone to catch fish.

Even as early as 4000 years ago, some Egyptian documentations point toward fishing being practiced as a sport as opposed to a means to a meal. It took some time for recreational fishing to catch on in more modern times. Around 1500s and 1600s popularity boomed for recreational fishing.

It’s popularity remains strong today with fishing shows, younger fishers, and days dedicated to fishing. Thanks for reading—now go catch a fish!

- John

Hey, Campers!

Last week I posted the second installment of my ‘Making Friends at Camp’ series about how easy it is to make friends at summer camp whether you’re a little shy or dreadfully terrified of talking to others. The thing is, once you’re there at camp, you don’t even think about it. You’ll naturally start talking to other kids and become fast friends with them.

It’s just a given. That’s what happens at camp.

But it’s not all that happens at camp. Sure, spreading your social wings and making friends is what camp is all about, but it’s also about getting to know yourself better. See, a funny thing happens when you’re away at camp because when you’re away from mom and dad, you do things a little differently than you otherwise would.

You take some healthy risks that you find within your character, you make decisions based on different values, you even behave differently and may discover things about yourself that you never realized were there before. This is all a part of the summer camp experience. You’ll begin to get a sense of the boundaries you’ve set for yourself thanks to opportunities like making friends at camp.

Making new friends at camp is made possible by these discoveries, after all, we need to have some sense of our own personality in order to share it with somebody else. But the experience of making new friends at camp can also help to fuel those self-discoveries too and so goes the cycle goes as both actions help encourage the other.

Isn’t summer camp great?!

Be sure to come back to my Blog next Tuesday to read the last segment about making friends at summer camp and the lifelong benefits of the relationships you build when you’re there.

Thanks for reading.

- John

Hey, Camp Fans!

Everything Summer Camp clearly understands the decoration as well as the demand behind stationery—why else would we offer awesome camp stationery from reputable brands like Paper so Pretty and Seal & Send?! But, stationery isn’t really a necessary product. It may be a cool product, but it’s something that’s come along in our modern world, it can’t have much history to it, right?

Wrong.

Not too surprisingly, stationery has been made and used for thousands of years. The first stationery most likely came from Ancient Egypt when they were looking for a different form of a writing surface other than the parchment paper they made out of thin sheep and goatskin. The parchment didn’t take to humidity very well and it would split easily.

They wanted something that was sure to keep for better documenting purposes. They developed what they called ‘papyrus’ (thought to be the word that we get ‘paper’ from) made from the pithy plant. It stood up to the dry conditions of Egypt as well as the humidity.

These ancient Egyptian documents of papyrus are a few thousand years old and still intact today! And guess what! They’re not just plain sheets with writing; they’re covered in ornate designs, painstakingly copied. This is unarguably stationery and not just ‘paper’.

Papyrus was imported from Egypt to Europe though it didn’t have the same shelf life in the cooler, northern temperatures. But in the year 105 A.D., a man named Cai Lun from China invented paper as we know it today, using tree bark.

It was this invention along with the printing press that brought along new opportunities for stationery designing. Sometime around 1450, Johannes Gutenberg’s press took away the tedious task of writing everything out by hand.

By the 1800’s, more than 180 paper mills created hundreds of jobs for Americans. Some people worked for stationery printers. People back then wanted stationery for the same reasons we do today like weddings invitations, birth announcements, written recipes, they even had monogrammed papers for letters and notes.

Demand has only increased throughout the years for printed stationery as people enjoy the atmosphere that stationery designs can add to an invite, a recipe, or a letter home from summer camp.

Thanks for reading.

- John