Day 34

As we were all sitting around the table the night before we were talking about what New York food we'd had. The subject of bagels came up, practically Brayden's favorite food, and everyone was shocked we hadn't tried any New York bagels yet. Well, Joann made sure of that one too. When we were all up and ready for the day we came down to a spread of delicious bagels and fruit. Dave was not thrilled she's gotten me a garlic one, but I sure was!

Our first stop this day was Thomas Edison's laboratory and home. I am so fortunate enough to have little inventor's in my home (currently inventing daily in my car) so I thought this would be the perfect stop for them.

The house tour tickets were timed so we had about 20 minutes to watch part of a movie about him then we had to head over to the house about 5 minutes away. Apparently, he'd bought this house after it was forclosed on in 1877 for just $125,000. It has 29 rooms with 8 bedrooms.  And of course we were not allowed to take pictures so we settled for one outside.

The tour guide was very informative and especially good with questions all the kids on the tour could come up with. Once we were finished, we walked around a little bit around the beautiful grounds and found Mr & Mrs Edison's burial sites. Dave and Brayden walked down to the carriage house, which later Edison turned into a garage, to look at his antique car collection while the girls and I drove the wrong way down the short road to go get them - oops!

Once we were finished we went back to the laboratory to explore and you guessed it - work on junior ranger badge activities! I believe this was Edison's third lab location and it was huge. There were multiple buildings to explore, but we only had time for the main laboratory with our 2 hours.

My favorite room of the lab was definitely the 3-story library full of books from top to bottom. We'd learned before of his belief of research being the foundation of a new idea and this was no more evident that in this room.

The best part of the lab was Edison's roll-top desk. When he died his son closed and locked the desk and it remained that way until what would be his 100th birthday. There were cubbies labeled for many of his ideas and inventions and my favorite one was simply labeled "new things". Edison spent so many hours in this very room his wife added a bed to the library because of his tendency to fall asleep on his workbench.

There were rooms and rooms of all kinds of manufacturing equipment and testing facilities. There were rooms containing tons of bottles for chemistry experiments. There were drafting and engineering rooms for product design and refinement. This was one amazing facility!









    

The girls were excited to see a small dress up area - Laney as a young lady and Ryan as an inventor! Next there was a neat room set up with many versions of the phonograph. We took a few minutes to use the QR codes to listen to three of them. The looks on the kids faces were priceless at the old music that played, especially the "Yes, We Have No Bananas" hit song!

The last room we walked through was an awesome display of many of the actual inventions in cases. There were some that made sense, Christmas lights, and some that I had no idea about - electric pen and concrete houses? His cement company actually supplied the builders of Yankee Stadium.

Our last stop was the gift shop and junior ranger questions. This ranger quizzed the kids pretty hard as compared to others but since they were working as a team they passed with flying colors.

We hopped back into the car to head to another family meet up with Dave's aunts, uncles, and cousins. Dave's Aunt Donna, who the kids affectionately and accidentally call "Aunt Dottie", was hosting all the family while we were in town, most I'd never met. Dave hadn't been to New Jersey in about 30 years, so he hadn't seen many of them either. The kids took awhile to warm up but once they got in the pool they had a blast.

It was fun to hear so many stories I hadn't before about the generation of kids that are Dave's age. It sounded like they'd had so much fun growing up with the Clarke family. And there was definitely no shortage of food! The kids feasted until all their bellies were popping out and then feasted more once they saw dessert.  The chocolate chip cookies were the best!

We all had a wonderful time and headed home full and smiling. We spent the rest of the evening doing laundry and on the couch preparing for the trip to D.C. as the kids watched a movie. Even though Dave's time with us there would be short, we were trying to fit in the things we all most wanted to do with him.