Time to Reboot the Brain

This post is brought to you by Energizer

I know I've been slacking on getting S.T.E.A.M Saturday out. It's hard being a full-time mom, student, and blogger. Hence the “Making sense of chaos” tagline. Back to school is in full swing and so far, we've dealt with new after school activities and a hurricane that canceled school. The hurricane caused some severe cabin fever, so we ended up doing a lot of painting, we made musical instruments, and built a working lamp! It was a great way to reboot our brains, clean out the cobwebs, and get the creative juices flowing instead of binge watching TV the whole time.

Energizer® sent us this great All-in-one light that we use all the time now. While our favorite way to use the lamp is to read in bed during our nightly routine, we've discovered it is ideal for projects in the darker rooms in our house. JaMonkey has started reading a lot more and a lot faster. She is blowing through books faster than she can hit the library for new ones. We've started reading older books together because I'm a sucker for a good Young Adult book. My husband and I switch off on reading to her each night. With the Energizer All-in-One light, we can prop it up on the legs that pop out and swivel the light to point towards the book page. JaMonkey even figured out a handy way to hang it from her loft bed and shine in her sitting area under her loft bed.

The girls built some fun wooden cars they got at the hardware store and then painted them to look they way they wanted instead of using the stickers that came with it. That sparked lots of painting that they gave me and their teachers. It was a giant colorful explosion in my dining room. They both love to paint and used quite of color. Painting is one of those activities we don't do often but have a lot of supplies for. We don't do it often because it requires a lot of prep and clean up. Since we replaced the carpet with luxury vinyl, I don't care if they get paint on the floor because it will wipe right off now.

We also got this new technology/engineering box in that we are excited to check out. You build your own light out of circuits, batteries, and mother boards. We've never done a project like this, so it was a cool new project. The light in our dining room isn't that great, so we brought the All-in-one light down to help with the project. We will be sharing the video for our creation in an upcoming S.T.E.A.M. Saturday. The hurricane didn't just bring in the cold weather, wind, and rain; it also brought us a giant piece of bamboo. Our neighbor has a bunch growing in their yard, and they must have cut some of it to get out of the driveway but didn't untangle it from the other giant pieces. The wind untangled it and it came into our back yard. Which was in our favor because we needed some bamboo to make a fun toy for our dog called a flirt pole. You tie the dog's favorite toy to the end of a pole, and they chase it around the yard. It's a great way for them to burn off energy which my two big dogs always need to do. We wanted bamboo because it bends and flexes when the dog catches the toy. The rest of the bamboo was turned into drums for the girls to play with. My husband cut them into different lengths to make different notes. They had their own jam session with the bamboo drums.

With all the fun stuff we did this past weekend with Hurricane Irma canceling school, they kids will be ready to head back to school. It also reminded me to have lots of batteries and lights on hand in case the power goes out, which thankfully it never did. We always make sure to send Energizer MAX batteries with our back-to-school supplies because it's something that most teachers buy themselves. Anything to help the teachers that care and teach my kids each day (so I don't have to, and I can go to school) I am down for helping. Got to make sure that everything is powered up for the ‘new year.’