TEAM 7's BLOG: Mr Kurth

My Family

I am extremely fortunate to have a wonderful family who I love and adore. Some of you might already know my wife Anna who is team-teaching in Room 2 this year with Mrs Rathbone. Anna has been teaching for ten years and is really excited about teaching the young ones.
Also when looking around Te Kowhai School you will spot my eldest daughter Brenna. She is in Miss Jobson's class this year and loves coming to school. I must admit I think I'm very lucky to have my daughter at school and I enjoy the times when she randomly comes up to me during the day and gives me a hug. Great warm fuzzy moments ;)
My youngest daughter, Ellie, is two and a half and can be quite a handful-definitely got her own personality and strong willed character!

Nice posing Kurth family

My Ute

Well, as some of you may know, I have been restoring an old Holden 1969 HT ute. I bought it for myself on my 30th Birthday. I'm 35 in May and it still isn't finished!!!
Here are some photos of it when I bought it - not the best condition aye :)

I spent ages striping the ute and taking it back to bare metal. It took forever because I used a grinder with 3M paint striper pads. hey that must be our school value of Drive because it took FOREVER!!!!

Look at that nice shiny metal.

Finished striping the front right gaurd...finally.

So far it has been a huge eye-opener for me in how much work is involved in restoring an old car. Those TV programmes make it look simple and give you a false sense of how quick and simple it will be. Having said that I've really enjoyed every part of doing it and wish I had more time to do so.

Before we shifted (meaning I had limited time with a garage before going to a new house where the garage was smaller and not allowed to make as much noise/mess) I managed to strip back the interior and paint with sound deadener. I also went over the top and covered it with Dynomat to give extra ommpha to stop the road noise.

Before shifting I also got into the motor and took it apart so that I could send parts off to be chromed. I'm looking forward to getting to the stage where I can put it back together because I have bought myself some triple su's to go on in the place of the standard one stromberg carb. Additionally I have now got some pacemaker headers to use instead of the standard exhaust. This should make it sound, look and work much better - I hope ;)

Here is one example of a ute that is a bit of motivation for me. I'd love for my ute to end up being even half as cool as this.

Mean as Bro!

Currently i have the ute in the garage at home after having it at a panel beaters for 6 months. Unfortunately I was mucked around and they didn't do any of the work that they said they would in the time allocated. I therefore got my ute back before Xmas and have decided to do the work myself again....hopefully quicker this time too. :)

The Warriors!!!!

I love most sports and enjoy playing sport myself, however one team that I really enjoy supporting is the Warriors. Like most kiwis I was gutted when they weren't able to win the grand final last year but was still really proud of our boys for the 2011 season.
A mate and i flew over to brisbane to watch the Warriors play the mighty Broncos. We had a great time and I must admit that Suncorp Stadium is an amazing place to visit. Even though we had seats about as high as you could possibly go we were still able to see the full field and games easily. Unfortunately that was the game that our boys lost by one point with a few minutes to go. However to make amends for this, while my mate and I were waiting to board our plane to fly home again we happened to see some of the Warriors hanging out in the cafe waiting for their flight too. So we went over and chatted to them and got a photo.

I knew I was a smaller guy...but man, the warrior boys make me look like a midget!!!

As well as going and seeing this game in Oz i went to several home games at Ericson Stadium. They lost those games too unfortunately...hmmm.....maybe I'm a bit of a jinx to the team!!!!!

Oh well, here I am ready for the season with my 2012 players jersey to show my suuport for the boys and I can't wait to see them smash Manly Sea Eagles in their first game...I'll be there at Eden Park but hopefully not being a jinx again :)