The Photographer's Wife Parenting, Disney, Travel, Reviews & Other Randomness

I’m excited to see the new Monsters Inc. movie, Monsters University and wish I could attend the Monstrous Summer 24-hour event at Walt Disney World on May 24th.

{photo source}

I wanted to get in on the monster fun somehow, so here’s a little giveaway for you guys!

Monsters hiding under the bed can be scary for children, and so can going to the dentist! America’s ToothFairy, Crest & Oral-B Pro-Health Stages would like to help children overcome their fear of both!

Monsters Can Be Fun and So Can Trips to the Dentist With These Tips from America’s ToothFairy!

Fear of the unknown can have a negative impact on a child’s feelings toward their dental visits.  Ensuring that your child is familiar with the dental practice and the people that are going to help them keep their smile healthy will ease their fears and make the dental visit go smoothly.

• Visit the dentist with your child prior to their first appointment.  Help your child understand what to expect on their visit by taking a tour of the practice and asking the dental assistant or dental hygienist to explain what will be done and demonstrate how each instrument will be used.  Not only will this help ease your child’s fears, but it also creates a wonderful learning opportunity!
• For slightly order children, bring them along to observe your routine dental cleaning and exam. This will allow them to ask questions, see how each instrument will be used, eliminate potential fears by observing your experience and help them understand the importance of practicing good oral health behaviors. (Contact your dental office prior to your appointment to advise them that your child will be with you.)
• Regular dental visits will enable your child to develop a sense of familiarity and comfort with the dental team and practice as well provide vital preventive care necessary for a healthy smile.
• Reinforcing concepts such as daily brushing and flossing, by posting a calendar and rewarding your child a gold star or sticker for every day of excellent oral care.  Help get your child excited about their next dental visit by bringing the calendar with you to show the dentist.
• Allow your child to bring their favorite toy or blanket with them on their dental visit to give them an added sense of security and comfort.
• Reading can have a soothing and calming effect on your child.  Bring their favorite book to read to them during their dental appointment.
• Let your child wear a costume on their dental visit.  This special treat can help them view going to the dentist as a fun activity.

Be positive about going to the dentist.  Avoid grumbling about your own dental appointments and help your child understand that going to the dentist helps them keep their smiles healthy!   This is important because after all, the ToothFairy likes to collect healthy teeth!

 

 Giveaway!

Open the door to brushing fun with Crest Pro-Health Stages Monsters Toothpaste and Oral-B Stages 3 Monsters Toothbrush! Children can start and end their days with Sulley and Mike while keeping their smiles bright and healthy!

These products featuring the fun-loving monsters from the upcoming movie, Monsters University will be available in your local Walmart this week, but you can enter to win them here!

One winner will be chosen to win a prize pack that includes:

• 2 Crest Pro-Health Stages Monsters, Inc. Toothpastes (4.2 oz. ea.) and
• 2 Oral-B Stages Monsters, Inc. Toothbrushes

How to enter: We’ll be using Rafflecopter for this one, so there are multiple ways to enter…pick one or pick them all!

This giveaway ends on Monday, May 27, 2013 at 11:59 pm. I will contact the winner the next day by email to get your mailing address and will announce the winner as an update to this blog post. Prize will be mailed directly to winner by the sponsor. US residents only please. Good luck!

{If you are viewing this post in an email or RSS feed, please click over to the blog to enter the contest using the Rafflecopter form }

a Rafflecopter giveaway

xoxo

Lynn

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Happy 11 months!

I guess that means the countdown is on to his birthday. Blows my mind.

We just finished making his invitation and we’ve started ordering items for his party. His gift is also sitting in the garage too. I look forward to sharing all the details with you!

Back to our little guy and what’s going on at 11 months.

Foods: His favorite foods are strawberries and bananas. We don’t really have a schedule when it comes to eating certain things at certain times, but he likes waffles, pancakes, fruit, applesauce, potatoes, sweet potatoes, chicken, sandwich turkey and will almost always try a little of what we’re eating. I’ll shamefully admit that I cut up a slice of pineapple pizza for him last night, too. He was definitely a fan. Daddy will be making a couple of new foods from this book for him this week, too.

Moving: He’s crawling everywhere and no spot in the house is off-limits. He can stand for several seconds and will lunge forward and take several steps…so close to walking…which also means lots of tumbles too. We felt so bad the week after we came back from Disney because he was falling all over the place and had at least 2 bruises on his face at the same time. No, random stranger in the grocery store, we don’t beat our child.

Teeth: 7

Weight: 23.25 pounds (according to the scale at Publix)

His new favorite toy? This splash pad!

Just waiting for the pool to be warm enough to swim in!

This time next month, we’ll be finishing up our next Disney World trip and getting ready to par-tay and celebrate our sweet boy Trent!

 

xoxo

Lynn

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With Trent’s first birthday party in about a month (holy crap, did I just say that?), we’ve been starting to work on some of the projects around the house that we’ve been putting off. Disney trips come first, right?

One of those projects was to replace our white shutters on the front of the house with black shutters. We got a new roof at the end of last year and decided on a black roof. You can read more about it here. We love how the black roof looks on the house, but felt that black shutters would tie the whole look together.

So today, we got on that.

So, as a refresher, here is what we started with…white shutters.

We purchased a set of black louvered vinyl exterior shutters for about $50 online (you can find them here, here and here). The old ones were pretty easy to remove. It’s weird how not having them on there makes the house look like it’s missing something and kinda naked.

Brett used the old shutters as a guide to determine where to drill holes on the new shutters, so he could use the existing holes in the brick on the house. Word of advice: make sure the shutters are both facing the same direction when you drill the holes…or else you’ll have to drill more holes into your house. Brett may or may not have made this mistake.

Then, he just fastened the new shutters in the same spot as the old ones and voila! The entire project took less than 30 minutes.

Much better.

I’ll admit, I struggled a bit when deciding to get a new roof last year. Talk about expensive. We knew when we moved in 3.5 years ago that we would need to replace it soon, but it just became one of those things that didn’t seem fun or necessary to pay for. But in the back of my mind, it bothered me. Every time a storm came by (which, in Florida, is every day), I had nightmares of the roof leaking or something else major happening. It wasn’t a secure feeling, and now that we had a baby in the house, it was time to make the house as safe as possible. I am so glad we did. I feel better about it, it looks much better and we even saved over $700 on our home insurance policy this year (and subsequent years as well!)!. Yes, it was expensive…especially since we chose a few “extras”, like better skylights (one of the rooms already had skylights that were well-worn and definitely needed replacing) as well as  premium materials and a better warranty.

For that reason, we chose a GAF roof. Honestly, I had no idea what brand was better than others, but Brett informed me that GAF was the way to go. And wouldn’t you know, I, the “Contest Queen” as friends and family like to call me, was excited to learn about a contest being sponsored by GAF. Check it out below!

GAF Roofing: What Do You Treasure Most Under Your Roof?

GAF, North America’s largest roofing manufacturer, is continuing its “Share What You Treasure” campaign with a new featured documentary webisode by critically acclaimed photographer and filmmaker James Minchin III released on May 15^th.

You can win weekly $100 gift cards to The Home Depot simply by sharing photos of what you treasure under your roof at www.sharewhatyoutreasure.com. There will also be a grand prize winner selected in November to win a $2500 shopping spree at The Home Depot!

For entrants who have a GAF roof on their house, you can win an amazing experience – their unique story could be captured by James Minchin III for the next webisode segment within the app. Minchin has worked with stars like Adam Levine, Mumford and Sons, Jakob Dylan, and Miley Cyrus. I vote for a video WITH Adam Levine!

Here’s how to enter the GAF “Share What You Treasure” campaign:

• Sign into www.sharewhatyoutreasure.com app in Facebook, start uploading photos and videos, and tell us what you treasure most about your home and family (your pets, your kids, your vintage car collection, etc.).
• Each user will have a personal page where other users can view their “Fan Collections.”

Prizes include: 

• Weekly winners of a $100 Home Depot gift card
• Grand prize winner to win a $2,500.00 Home Depot shopping spree
• One more GAF roof owner will be selected to be featured in a GAF webisode created by celebrity filmmaker James Minchin III

Good luck if you enter!

xoxo

Lynn

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Brett and Trent definitely spoiled me this Mother’s Day…my very first. I had gotten a lovely photo gift a few days early (see it here) and we also planned on going to Panama City Beach to grab some grub and hit the beach for a few hours. I was also surprised when I woke up and Brett handed me a new necklace. My clasp broke a few weeks ago and I’ve been going sans necklace ever since and I’ve felt naked. He was going to just fix the clasp, but they told him he would need a new one and with the price of gold as high as it is, the clasp would have cost twice as much as the necklace cost him in the first place…so he just got me a new one!

{Entertainment from Daddy}

We got to PCB sometime around noon and went straight to Red Robin…we were hungry! We don’t have a Red Robin in Tallahassee, so we only get to enjoy it every once in a while, but it is so so good. Our waiter was awesome! He made great recommendations and introduced us to a new way to have our drinks. They have bottomless drinks, but we thought we could only go with the first type of drink we ordered for the rest of the meal, but no, he suggested we start with a Limeade and then a freckled lemonade and then finish up with a root beer float for dessert (too bad he didn’t throw in a bottomless margarita in there somewhere).

Well, don’t mind if we do!

Brett got a regular chicken sandwich (he’s so boring!) and I got a Bruschetta chicken sandwich, with sweet potato fries so Trent could eat some too.

The freckled lemonade has pieces of strawberries in it, so we were giving them to Trent. The manager noticed this and brought us over a small cup of strawberries!

Which he gobbled up. I even gave him a couple of bites of the vanilla soft serve from the root beer float. I’m such a bad mommy.

After all three of our tummies were full, we went into a few shops nearby and then headed over to the beach. We’re not really the biggest beach fans. I think it’s because we have a pool at home, which is much cleaner and easier to enjoy. To us, the beach is best enjoyed with a group of friends and family all spending the day together. But that may change when Trent is a bit older. When we first got there, he was a bit very cranky, so he wanted nothing to do with sand or water or anything.

Since he slept in the car, we didn’t think he was tired, but apparently he was very tired and ended up sleeping on me for about an hour. He woke up happy as can be, but we only stayed about another 30 minutes so we could have dinner before the drive back home. I’m happy we got a little sand and water fun before leaving.

Below is a video of Trent’s first trip to the beach. I hope you enjoy! (if you are reading this post in your email or RSS feed, please click over to the blog to watch it!)

We packed up and changed back into our clothes in the car in the parking lot (we’re classy ’round these parts!), then headed over to Margaritaville, a first time for both of us. We had a lovely view from our table out on the deck. Unfortunately, no margaritas were consumed and I was kind of disappointed in their menu selection (I wanted more seafood options) but overall, we enjoyed our meal.

Brett had seafood macaroni and cheese.

I had chicken/steak fajitas.

On the way home, we stopped by a gas station store to grab some drinks for the road. They had this nifty milkshake machine that I had never seen before, so I made Brett get a milkshake so I could see how it worked – and he gladly obliged.

You pick a flavor container on the right and then place it in the machine on the left and use the touchscreen to select your level of consistency. It then mixes up your milkshake in about 30 seconds for you to enjoy. Yum. I must be easily entertained.

It was a fun day…not only because I spent Mother’s Day with my two favorite boys, but it’s always nice to get away, even if it’s just for a day or dinner.

 

xoxo

Lynn

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I know I’m a day early, but I also got my Mother’s Day gift from Trent and Brett a little early and just had to share.

I came home from work the other day to these 3 canvas photos up on our bedroom wall. I love how each photo perfectly illustrates different aspects of his personality.

Brett took them while I was at work before we went on our trip. Those sneaky boys.

We’re happy the weather forecast improved for tomorrow. I swear, I don’t even know why I look at the weather forecast any more. I should just look the day before and that’s it. We will probably be going to the beach for a little while, then eat at Red Robin and do some shopping. I’m excited for Trent’s first trip to the beach!

These past 2 weeks since coming home from Disney World have been crazy busy…me at work and Brett with photography. We’re sloooowly working on the trip report and photos/videos, so hopefully we’ll be sharing those soon. We have another trip in June, as well his first birthday party, so fingers crossed we’ll have it all done by then!

I hope you enjoy your Mother’s Day!

 

xoxo

Lynn

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