Summer 2012

Hello Friends! 

It was a terrific summer and we hope that all our campers are off to a great start of a new school year. We had so much fun this summer; it is hard to believe camp has been over for several weeks! 

Even though some time has passed, we look back on the summer with fond memories. We were so lucky to see so many campers take a chance and perform in front of a crowd for our Play and Horse Show. There were 80 kids involved in the play and another 75 in the horse show. Way to go! Not only did our campers learn and grow, but they made a difference in the world. This summer HPR, through our work with Feed My Starving Children, fed thousands of hungry children across the world.  We also raised over $1,500 dollars for the American Cancer Society – thank you to all the families that donated!

This summer was a blast and it may be over, but HPR is already thinking about all the fun we will have next year! We even have the dates for next year's camp sessions! 

HPR 2013

June 12th-June 15th : 3 Day Camp

June 17th-August 9th : Traditional Camp Programs

July 4th-5th : Off for Holiday

August 12th-August 16th : Extended Camp Programming 

We have got lots of new ideas we'll be working on over the winter that we are really excited about! Remember to check back with us in January and we'll tell you all about them! We wish everyone a fantastic year and we can't wait to see your happy faces next summer!

www.hiddenpinesranch.com

Last Week Announcements

A couple announcements about common questions we've been receiving:

HPR's production of Snow White is this Thursday August 9th at 3pm and everyone is invited! Campers involved in the play, including those not normally scheduled for Thursdays, should plan on arriving in the morning and will then be spending the full day in rehearsal. It is not your responsibility to provide a costume for your camper, but if you have any props or costumes you'd like to bring in you can bring it on Thursday. Please label anything you send to camp so we make sure it gets home! Thank you so much, the entire cast is really excited to share our hard work with you!  If you want to watch the play, you are more than welcome to come and see what the campers have been working on.  We hope to see you here.

HPR's Annual Horse Show Starts at 9am on Friday August 10th. Every camper was invited to participate and those that chose to do so are incredibly excited to share their skills with you. There are a lot of riding games you'll have the opportunity to watch like Simon Says, Extreme Red light Green Light, Barrels and more! Parents are welcome to attend amd take plenty of pictures from outside the riding ring but please no flash photography. We hope to see you for all our fun!

We will have a lot of cars for our big events this week so as you come in to visit just follow the driveway and turn left into the staff parking lot/early pickup area. We'll have more than enough room for everyone!

Hope to see you soon for an exciting end to a great summer!

Week Seven 7/30-8/3

Wow! We can't believe it but we just finished week seven of our summer and there is only one more week left! We spent this week learning about the world from our oldest campers, the LITs. They worked really hard to plan out our theme Friday and they did a fantastic job! Some of their preparation involved listening to stories from some of our counselors that have had experiences abroad. Not only did they learn about many different countries, our LITs and Middle school campers also served the world by volunteering at Feed My Starving Children. HPR packed food to feed over 160 children for an entire year. Way to serve the world HPR!

Our Middle School campers have been enjoying a new morning lesson structure that they are enjoying tremendously. Our counselors have been offering very unique choices for our campers to pick between every morning, we've seen Russian lessons, philosophy discussions, ultimate frisbee, even bird house building. It has been a lot of fun to see our camper's interests growing! Middle School also enjoyed a fantastic trip to Como Zoo and a water park on Friday which was a blast!

We've been filling our last two weeks with tons of exciting trips for every group at camp! Bike trips, overnights, service projects, playing at the beach, and a canoe trip, just to name a few. It has been so much fun to challenge our campers with unique experiences and they have been growing so much from them. Our final traditional camp overnight was a tremendous success, it was a perfect night for camping   with an absolutely gorgeous full moon. What a treat!

Another reminder that the penny wars begin on Monday so save your loose change so we can have fun and help the American Cancer Society! Also they big HPR production of Snow White is Thursday August 9th at 3pm and we would love to share our hard work with you! We hope you are having as much fun this weekend as we have all week! See you on Monday!

Week Six 7/23-7/27

Hello Friends! We hope you've been enjoying the Olympics this week because we sure have! We had our own very special Galactic Olympics on Friday and had all kinds of great Olympic fun all week. At We've done the long jump, the shot-put, marathon running, hurdles, you name it and our campers did it!

It was so fun to see everyone working hard and loving every minute of it, it's possible we have a few young Olympiads on our hands! Just a reminder, we have had a lot of campers attending in flip flops which has been limiting a lot of our fun. Please send your camper to HPR with tennis shoes or sandals with straps.

We've done plenty of outdoor cooking this week as our traditional campers made popcorn over the fire at Nature Camp craft and packed and planned out meals for a imaginary Boundary Waters trip at canoeing. Our oldest campers all participated in an overnight this week, the middle school campers went to William O'Brien State Park and our LITs went to Interstate Park near Taylors Falls. Both trips were a huge success and I'm sure our campers will be talking about their experiences for years to come. Congratulations to everyone for all your hard work and preparation, we're so glad you had fun!

Our Traditional campers have another overnight this week on Thursday August 2nd to Friday August 3rd. This will be for everyone in Jake, Kirsten, Jeff, Joseph, Cady B, and Carolyn's groups, as well as the members of Cody, Rachel F, Joe B, Eric, Tori, and Elaine's groups that started camp on 7/16. If you do not normally attend camp on Thursdays you are still welcome to participate by arriving after 4:45pm on Thursday. If you do not attend on Fridays you are welcome to participate as well by leaving at 8am on Friday. It is going to be a lot of fun and we hope to see you there!

We only have two more weeks of camp, but they're going to be the best ones yet! We're starting the Penny wars for the American Cancer Society next week (Aug 6). We do our best to raise at least $1,000 each year by bringing in all our loose change. So save your pennies and dollars for positive points towards a party for the winning group and save those silver coins for negative points to slow down all the other groups. All the proceeds of our camp fun will go towards cancer research, let's have fun and work hard to help a lot of people!

HPR's production of Snow White will be on August 9th at 3pm. Everyone is invited to attend and support our talented campers. If your child is involved in the play and you'd like to help out we would love to talk to you. The biggest place to help is always costumes and props. If you have anything you'd like to donate or loan towards this production please address an email to Nick Lande, one of our camp managers and the director of Snow White, at camp@hiddenpinesranch.com Other questions are always welcome too!

It has been a terrific summer so far and it is only going up! We can't wait to start again on Monday! See you soon!

Cast List for HPR's Snow White

We're so excited to announce the cast of HPR musical! Practices will take place in the afternoons and the big show is on Thursday August 9th. All campers involved in the play are welcome to attend on this Thursday regardless of their normal schedules, we need all our friends for a big day of practice! Keep checking the blog and Facebook for more announcements! 

Snow White

Cast List

Sister 1: Jorja Goudreau

Sister 2: Lily Olson

Little Boy: Jack Distad

Mom: Katie Grannis

Snow White: Addie Smittkamp

Evil Queen: Lexi Oeltjen

Mirror: Amy Longtin

Queen’s Servants: Rachel Colwell, Kacey Kroeck, Ella Netland, Maddie Oeltjen, Emma Dornseif, Hannah Bruentrup, Abbie Garness

Huntsman: Jack Denton

Doc: Nathan Dirkes

Sleepy: Frankie Franta

Sneezy: Kelly Grannis

Grumpy: Marley McGuire

Bashful: Julia Enright

Happy: Ella Runyon

Dopey: Daniel Lapadat

DNR Representative: Leif Olson

Prince Charming: Dan Stone

Soldiers/Prince’s Men: Sam Elletson, John Lillie, Ethan Citsay, Thomas Meyers

Young Queen: Delaney McDowell

King: Charlie Vick

Doctor: Catherine Moore

Huntsman’s Angel: Sam Stone

Huntsman’s Devil: Mari Arndt

Warning Bird: Dani Lillie

Head Villager: Lily Olson

Evil Peddlers: Lizzie Bregel, Nate Averbeck, Sydney Stone

Young Snow White: Tara Martin

Magic Trees/Flowers:

Sydney Rodd, Gabby Olson, Grace Kleppe, Amanda Oyen, Annika Citsay, Leah Staruck, Zoe Colombo, Grace Colwell

Dwarf Villagers:

Noah Denton, Gwen Wegleitner, Hallie Vick, Emily Elletson, Cooper Olson, Wyatt Herrick, Meghan Remely, Sophia Arndt

Woodland Creatures: Axel Colombo, Sydney Rogness, Amya Davis, Nick Grannis, Nick Nelson

Week Five 7/16-7/20

It's already the second half of our summer and we were so pleased to see some new faces join us at camp for these next four weeks! We've been off to a great start, filling the next part of our summer with tons of fun and even a little bit of learning! In Science our campers studied frogs and learned to write their observations down in a organized format, they made journal entries just like real scientists! Our area leader, Rachel Fosse, has been doing an amazing job getting campers excited about science. Way to go Rachel!

At Sportsfield we've been working on our football skills, specifically passing and kicking, and the campers were challenged to see how far they could move a football. We laid a tape measure down and were amazed at how far some of our campers could punt and pass! The throwing record was 81 feet and the kicking record was a whopping 94 feet! Way to go HPR!

This week at our Nature Campcraft, our resident expert Deb Lyons has been impressing everyone even more than usual! Campers made hundreds of pancakes on homemade outdoor stoves for Lumberjack Day Friday, they have been working in their own saw yard like real lumberjacks, and learning to identify all the different trees at camp just by their leaves! It is so much fun to watch all our camper's confidence grow as they learn to appreciate the great outdoors!

Arts and Crafts had a lot of fun as well this week with some creative driveway painting. We listened to different styles of music like jazz, musicals, even some current songs while we let it inspire us to paint the driveway with a cool blend of cornstarch, water, and dyes for a homemade paint!

We had a big announcement this week that has been keeping the kids extremely excited, we announced that this summer's musical production will be Snow White! We've been holding auditions all this week and everyone who participated will have a role in the play! The cast list will go up first thing on Monday at camp and on the blog!

Lumberjack Friday was "Tree-rific!" We had a great time flying down our log chute.  We were able to test the strength of camp's little lumberjacks with a log dragging race.  Our log stacking skills were put to the test with jungle Jenga and we fueled all this fun with plenty of Flapjacks and maple syrup!  After all of our fun morning activities, we gathered together to put on our own Lumberjack Day Parade.  All of the groups made their own floats and marched in our parade. Everyone put in so much time and creativity, it was so much fun! Check out the pictures below and on our Facebook! to see all the campers in their floats.

Next week we will be holding the Galactic Olympics!  The activities are going to be out of this world!  Dress as an alien athlete and get excited to participate.

Week Four

Wow! It's hard to believe we're already halfway through this summer! Time flies when you're having fun, and we have been having a lot of it! Our middle school campers have been having lots of fun cooling off at the beach. When we were back at camp our middle school camp spent their mornings painting on canvas, playing football, and learning about chanting in their morning music lesson. Awesome!

Our LITs went to Feed My Starving Children this week and worked really hard to give back to the world, we are so proud!

This week was especially exciting as our Traditional Camp was buzzing with excitement all week about Friday's Variety Show and special Hunger Games afternoon activity. Afternoon activities were offered every day after lunch for campers to practice their variety show talents which included lots of music, gymnastics and even some ventriloquism! It was an amazing show with amazing camper helpers. A big thanks to Lexi Oeltjen, Amy Longtin, and Evan Hakamaki for all their help leading the show!

Our Middle school director, Matt Fosse, took on an ambitious project and created a real life version of the popular book and movie, The Hunger Games. Campers had a blast getting their faces painted and participating in all sorts of challenges that were based off of the book. What an awesome opportunity to act out one of your favorite books! Thanks Matt!

This Friday's theme was Ice Age and we tried to play it cool all day by making ice cube necklaces, dressing up in funny winter gear and dancing around the driveway circle for a candy walk! Debbie puts in so much work planning these Fridays and everyone has a lot of fun, we can't wait for next Friday, it's Lumberjack Days! Remember to dress in your best flannel and beards!

Thanks for checking the blog and keep spreading the word about all the fun we're having and remember to check out even more of our photos on Facebook