Two-thirds of October 2024

[jedimentat]

(not my pic)







Due to a geomagnetic storm, the northern lights were visible from NJ this month. we managed to catch some via the naked eye at our house, and then via visible-via-camera at Round Valley and Deer Path Park









Halloween Decor









Awesome Oktoberfest at friends' house



Pretty awesome Trunk or Treat event, with food trucks and fireworks in Alexandria Park


















some charcoal skull drawings after we read John Klassen's 'The Skull'





We studied the Industrial Revolution this month, with a particular focus on Edison and Tesla. One of our field trips was to the Mercer Museum in Doylestown, PA, where a tilemaker named Mercer collected pre-Industrial artifacts at the turn of the century for a museum housed in a concrete castle. Pretty fantastic and interesting to see artifacts and think about how they were part of a now-vanished landscape.





wooden water pipe





















really neat stove


life was dangerous back then. everyday things were out to kill ya. ya gotta watch out.


Fonthill Castle- Mercer's home was also a fantastic visit...he similarly encased it in concrete, and covered it with tiles. He traveled extensively in Europe, North Africa, China, and the Yucatan, and brought back artifacts (particularly tiles), which he cemented into his home with labels of where they were from. It's pretty rad and I recommend going to see it if you are in the area. We really enjoyed seeing it.

























...he included some stairs featuring his dog, Rollo














Pickwick Papers mantelpiece






loved a sugargum tree which was next to Fonthill so much that we ordered one to plant at our house.



Liberty

baskets, cranes, tulips, flowers..so much origami



...we grew a pineapple


Liberty collected a ton of acorns for the Woodlands Wildlife Refuge for the animals there to eat







Also, Liberty's been asking to make some acorn candles for a long time...we finally did it, (...and only started a very small fire)






Kirk

Kirk always has a pretty definite idea of what he wants to be for Halloween










Dogs

















Chickens





not a great pic but Snowdrop is my fave





Dealt with a solar battery motherboard malfunction and replacement; an issue which took literally 5 weeks to resolve and kept breaking.



Looking into getting a new(er) used vehicle.



Donated blood. Kids went to dentist and pediatrician and orthodontist. Dealing with hip.
Forgot to mention that we went to see 'The Wild Robot' with the kids @ Regal Pohatcong.

Garden/Cooking/Baking






Because we are going to the Edison Museum, and plan on going to a corn maze, trick-or-treating, Day of the Dead stuff, etc etc, I didn't think it would all fit in one post, so the rest of October will likely be bookended with November.