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Tiff just came across this smurf in a basket of her old toys we grabbed from her grandma’s house. I can’t even imagine this toy being made now without some sort of lawsuit or child advocacy group going nuts over it…

“Just wait ’till she’s mobile” has been one of the most repeated phrases I’ve heard as we have journeyed through the (sometimes harrowing, yet always fun) initial stages of life as new parents. Well friends, she’s mobile, and it is both very cute and a bit scary at the same time…She now has the ability to get at all those things we’ve been able to keep at arms length…you know, plastic bags, glassware, knives…the basics. I suppose now we must bubble wrap, child-latch, lock up all things sharp, pointy or otherwise dangerous to babies. In any event, I was able to capture one of the very first successful attempts at this new development stage…the crawl…

Check out our YouTube Channel for more Cora related moving pictures.

This isn’t the normal kind of post found on the houseofdixon, but this one was too good to pass up. I had one of those “AH-HA” moments as I sat there watching this animated gif. I never knew exactly how a sewing machine works, and if this is truly correct, it is the single best description…ever… via SwissMiss.com

Keep staring as long as you like…i spent 5 minutes awestruck by the simplicity…

If you use Twitter, you know about #followfriday, but I’m officially instituting “High-Five Friday – Give one, Get one”. Is there anything better than giving/receiving a high-five? It makes everybody feel good. What’s more, I have created a logo that can be purchased on many fine products including the pink onesie from the folks over at Cafepress. If you want to download the fine artwork I have painstakingly created (in about 5 mins) click the logo to enlarge and then download from there…

In this case, a phillips screwdriver was the weapon of choice as I did battle with the broken (not draining) washing machine last night. During this process I found out a few things that are worth passing along regarding your basic home appliance repair work…

A little back story…It started acting weird a little while ago and got to the point where a call to our local appliance repair person was imminent due to the overflowing water and seemingly non-functional drain pump. Tiff looked through the user manual (which is useless by the way) and found nothing. Due mostly to procrastination we didn’t make that phone call in futile hopes that it would magically start working again. Well, it didn’t…So I got my trusty phillips screwdriver and went to work on the 6 screws preventing me from washer’s innards, and what did I find when I got the top cover off?…Another manual in a nice little plastic sleeve.

What!?

Yes, there is another manual inside the washer. On the cover it even says something like “for Service Technicians only…” or some such pretentious garbage. Well, I’m not a service technician and I am going to read this thing because I am the man of this house and it’s my prerogative. Lo and Behold, what did I find? A guide on how to run all of the washer’s systems individually and return error codes on anything not working properly…exactly what one would need to determine precisely what is wrong with said piece of equipment. And better yet, the detailed step by step instructions were not only easy to follow, but the instructions were written in a way that wasn’t complicated or confusing…no these instructions were simple and well layed out…So, I started going through the tests.

• low speed spin
• high speed spin
• door lock
• detergent fill
• fabric softener fill
• main tub fill
• and finally drain/ pump test…

E31 it said after this test when I ran the error codes test, which when compared to the handy “technicians only” manual told me that this was a drain error most likely either a drain filter clog or a broken impeller on the pump itself. A little searching on the internet and I found a great how-to on getting at and then cleaning the drain filter on a GE model Adora Washing machine…

GE Adora Lint Filter Cleanout – More DIY How To Projects

You might ask yourself, what do those two things have in common, and no it’s not a study recently done on my brain and its poor functioning. Some know that Tiff was a Psychology major in college, and she will tell you it’s not a particularly helpful degree if you’re only planning on getting a bachelors. There is a silver lining to this story though, we just found out that her undergraduate thesis (done as part of her honors program) was partly used in an article that was published in…you guessed it the Neuropsychology journal alongside her advisor and another person. The title of this article has lots of words in it, which I guess has a direct relationship to how important it is. So long is the title that I’ll leave it as it’s own paragraph in this post to make sure it is fully understood…See Dictionary.com for any words you don’t know….here goes…

Increased Interhemispheric Interaction is Associated with Earlier Offset of Childhood Amnesia

Last weekend we took the Young Adults group to Red River Gorge. This was our second time there, and we still love it! There is so much beautiful scenery, hiking trails, and this year we found, yes, an honest to goodness swimmin’ hole complete with rope swing and big rock cliff to jump off. We all had lots of fun, so much so that some didn’t want to come back. (The 5th photo down is yours truly jumping off the rock cliff.)

Note: There are more photos @ youngadults.myphotoalbum.com

Last weekend we went on a camping trip with some friends from our Young Adults Group @ Bowling Green Covenant Church. It was very hot, so we spent a lot of time relaxing and trying to stay cool. Here are some of the photos.

Last night we and 30+ others had a progressive dinner between 5 houses. Thanks to the Caperna’s, Eberly’s, Mattingly’s, Sanderson’s, and Dixon Senior’s. The photos I have so far are in the Young Adults Photo Gallery. Here are a few: