Night Guards O my

After a recent dental appointment I found out that I have been grinding my front teeth. The dentist tells me that they are becoming thin and are starting to get very small chips in them. He recommended a night guard. But when I found out it was going to cost me a whopping $380 I about fell in the floor. I was thinking I just can’t afford this right now. I ended up online researching night guards and I found this dental lab where you can order a kit make the mold your self send it in and they send you the guard. The price is less than half of what my dentist was charging. After some more reasearch and looking around It began to sound better and better. Being the blogger that I am I decided to see if they wanted to participate in a review. I was able to get in touch with https://www.proteethguard.com/. ProTeeth was kind enough to send me a kit to review and I am going to tell you how I went.

First off they offer 4 different nightguards. They offer a soft guard for light grinding or clenching, A hybrid which is a combo of soft and hard for moderate grinding, a hard guard for heavy grinding and finally a ultra thin guard for daytime grinding. Pricing for each one is different and ranges from $139.99 to  $189.99. Even there most expensive heaviest guard is way less than what my dentist sells his for. They offer a money back guarantee which is amazing you really have nothing to loose on this one. Ordering is easy if you have a question send them an email customer service is great they got back to me very quickly when I ask them crazy questions.

Shipping of the kit was quick they ordered the kit for me on Friday afternoon and it came Tuesday. You will need to choose if you want your guard to for the upper teeth or the lower teeth. The kit contains two upper trays and two lower trays, one in a regular size and one in a small, impression putty, instructions and a bubble envelope that you will use to send your impressions back to the lab. They offer a great how to video on how to do the impressions and the written instructions are clear and easy to follow.

First you need to decide which size of tray you need to use. You don't want it to be tight because you

need to have room for the putty inside the tray plus your teeth. I went with the medium standard size tray. You will have 60 seconds from the time you start mixing the putty to the time is starts to harden up so mix quickly. Really 60 seconds doesn't seem like a lot of time but I did not feel rushed and it the putty mixed easily. I kneaded the putty tell it was a uniform color I rolled it into a snake shape and laid it in the tray. Lick you lips put the tray into your mouth lining it up with your teeth. Now you need to push the tray straight up and into your teeth. DO NOT wiggle it around straight up make sure to use your fingers to press it straight up into your back teeth. Then you wait 4 minutes for it to set. This will be the longest 4 minutes ever. The girls sang to me and tried to get me to laugh which is not advisable. When your 4 minutes is up and the putty is set you can pop it out by pulling straight down. You will want to take a good look at your impression and make sure you have a clean impression. Take a look to see that the impression is centered and that you can clearly see all of your teeth in the impression. You will then repeat the process for the lower teeth. Once you have good impressions you will stick them in the bubble envelope and send them back to ProTeeth Guard. The lab makes your guard the same way that what ever lab your dentist uses makes your guard. You will receive your fancy new night guard in 4-11 days. If you have a problem with your guard they will do what ever they can to make it fit.



I followed all the steps and sent off my impressions. They sent me a nice little note in my email basically letting me know I did the top impression wrong and they wanted me to do it again. They sent me an additional upper impression kit at no cost. The lab techs sent a nice little note letting me know what I did wrong the first time and how to get a better impression. Back in the bathroom I went I repeated the process getting the impression more centered and allowing one extra minute for it to harden up. I stuck them back in the prepaid envelope and sent them out again. A couple days later I got a nice email from them telling me my impressions were good and my order status was now CREATING TEETH GUARD. I have no idea why but I was excited to see this update. The note also said it would take 7 to 11 days for my guard to be created and I would receive a chipping notice when it shipped.

My guard arrived in a bubble wrap envelope secured in a hard plastic box. As you can see the guard is crystal clear and is an exact match to my teeth. This is a lower guard day guard so its ultra thin. The fit is great it is very comfortable and after 4 weeks I have had zero issues with it rubbing. It does take a bit to get used to if you plan to talk with it in your mouth. For the most part its not all that visibly noticeable. Since this one is a day guard you should be able to talk with it in your mouth and it should be comfortable. I can talk ok with it. My speech is slightly different sounding. Like any dental appliance it takes some getting used to. You can not eat with the day guard so you will need to remove it. I can drink with it after some practice. How ever I don't recommend drinking dark colored drinks because it could stain the guard over time.

Over all I am very pleased with my Pro Guard. If your dentist is recommending you to get a day or night guard you might take a good look at Pro Teeth Guard.

Disclaimer: I received this product free in exchange of my honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Come on Spring

Me and the girls have started seeds for the garden. We have the seed flats near a heater vent to keep them warm and help speed up the sprouting process. We have two varieties of lettuce and two varieties of tomatoes coming up so far. One luffa has sprouted and we hope to get a couple more to sprout this week. 

We have an EGG!

This is our first Egg! I meant to post it last week but life got crazy and I didn’t realize I hadn’thit publish on this post. So here it is in all its glory a beautiful tiny brown egg. A neighbor gave the girls a pair of chickens that stay small. Don’t ask me what kind they are because I have no idea. Takes a look at the pictures and if you know what they are leave me a comment because we would love to know. Any way the female has started laying and the girls are excited. 

Chicken coop ..... $100

Chicken feeder.....$20

Chicken water thing....$15

Chicken Feed..... $10 a bag 

The Girls excitement when they found that first egg

....... Priceless

Soaping Shenanigans

So I got brave and decided to try making shampoo bars with SCI noodles. There was a bit of a learning curve with getting these pressed hard enough but I think I have it down now. I’m looking a getting a nicer mold but for a practice run these worked out just fine. They smell amazon they lather well and my curls have never looked better.

IXL Learning Review

Has anyone ever tried IXL Learning? We are trying out a annual membership. This is an online supplemental curriculum. There is math and language arts for grade pre-k through 12. Then they offer 2nd through 8th grade science and 2nd through 8th grade social studies. Then they have an intro to Spanish. The amount of content covered in each subject area varies from 48 to 300+ different skills. An annual membership for the combo package is $159 for one child and you can add additional children for $40. They have a few other options in different price ranges that you can find on the website https://www.ixl.com/membership/family/pricing.

Set up is very easy. You log in create your profile and those of your children. Each of the girls has their own log in. Parent goodies: I get a weekly report in my email so I can see if they are logging in and how much they have done and how well they have been doing.  They use some handy dandy charts and graphs to display this information. It also gives me suggested lessons for each child. When I logged in I found a tab at the top that for me says MO standards. Under this tab I can find a listing of the different standards that are covered in this program. Depending on what state you put in your profile this should change to fit your needs. I love that the standards are printable. I printed them off then I highlight each one that we have covered with a lesson through IXL. I will then add these to each of there portfolio boxes at the end of the year. The analytics tab will give you loads of info on how your kids are doing. You can view there usage how many questions they have answered, how much time they have spent on the program, number of skills covered. You can also get a preview of the questions they have been working on. There is a diagnostic tab that tells you what they need to work on. A trouble spots tab that simply tells you what they are having a hard time with. Then a scores, questions, and a progress tabs.

Both of the girls have been working in IXL. I ask them to start off with the diagnostic area. This will ask them some questions then give them recommended areas that they need to work on it basically gives them a jumping off point and helps you to see what they need to work on. The diagnostics on this program is a little different from what we have done with other programs. It is called continuous diagnostics. Which basically means it never really ends this was hard for the girls because they didn't know when to stop. To start off your child should do enough to get a good picture of what they need to work on. The girls did questions tell I had a little info on what they knew for each of the subjects offered this takes some where around 120-150 questions. I did not have them do all of these questions in one sitting. I had them work on it for about 15 min at a time. The program recommends your child continue to answer 10-15 questions in the diagnostic section every week to help you see what areas they need to work on.

 I ask them both to work through the recommended lessons that the diagnostics test recommends one day a week. As they work through those lessons and answer more diagnostic questions it gives them different recommended lessons. This helps to fill any gaps that they may have. I can then compare what they have completed and done well on with the standards for our state and keep track of how they are doing over all. After they do those recommended lessons they are then allowed to work on any subject area that they want.

Snoopys favorite subject out of everything she tried is Science. She says the lessons give her good information that is easy to understand and follow. She said the questions fit the information and it doesn't ask her anything crazy that was not covered in the lesson information. She has also started working through the history section because she just finished up our primary history curriculum. She had trouble explaining to me how it worked so I logged into my parent account and did few of these sections my self just to see how it worked. It started me off with some questions if I answered wrong it gave me the correct answer and an explanation. Some times when I gave the correct answer it gave me a more in depth explanation which is great. The explanations often times came with a picture or photograph. I was please with the topics covered under history and we will definitely be doing more with it in the coming weeks.

Gabby likes the Spanish section best. She has zero experience with Spanish other than what she orders at the local Mexican restaurant. She says that as you work through it you can earn different virtual prizes likes stickers and stuff. She said she would like to see it offer something like a digital books. She tells me that the lessons offer audio so she can hear the letter and word sounds. It tells you if its right or wrong in Spanish. She is hoping she will pick up enough to be able to have short conversations with the lady that owns the local Mexican restaurant. The second subject area she worked with was  math. Math is a trouble area for her and we are always willing to try something that might help her understanding in a certain area. So far she has not learned any new methods but she was happy to see that it gave her an explanation when she got the wrong answer to something. She would like to see more instruction before beginning the problems.

Over all I am pleased with the topic offered in IXL Learning. I think its a great supplemental program that could be helpful for filling in any gaps you may be worried about in your primary curriculum. Click the link and take a look at what the other crew teams are saying about IXL.

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A beautiful winter sunset. The Lord sure did give me a beautiful place to live.