Uncle James and Auntie Tamsin!

I am proud to announce that for the first time I am an Auntie! James's sister Sara gave birth to a VERY cute boy on 31st August, and here they are! Logan Taylor Jokela and his proud mum and dad!

Rain rain...

Just to prove that the UK isn't the only place to have a lot of rain, here is proof that Alaska can, once in a few decades, get SO MUCH rain that the streams turn into crazy rivers and nearly wash away cabins!
If you can imagine...up to this point in time you had to clamber up a steep back and then walk quite a good way to get to the cabin's front door. Now you can get out of the boat and practically step into the cabin! CRAZY! And this picture below is of the outhouse which now FACES the river instead of trees and other privacy-giving foliage. Needless to say it will be moved (I hope!)

James's description of the cabin now was 'you can stand in the front door and pee in the river'. It appears he wasn't wrong! Next spring will see him, his dad (who owns the cabin) and others moving the entire cabin back from the new bank. Good luck!

Thankfully the rain has stopped, for the most part. Two weeks of solid rain was NOT fun and although I miss England terribly I didn't need such a vivid and wet reminder of it!!!!

Friends friends...

In no particular order here are some of my favourite people on the other side of the pond.....


Above is Nicola who I have know since she was weeny tiny cute, and is now getting old and grey (which means I am even OLDER) (!)

Big bro Haden looking oh-so-handsome and Alice - another one who used to be weeny tiny cute til she got all old and wrinkly...




Little Bro and fresh new wifey Becs, and their crazy weird friends Matt and girlie friend Beccy..



Me and my best mate Rachel comparing baby belly sizes... Neither if us are very big...yet...

And this would be Tig the dog...fresh after a watering with the watering can. The poor old man can't take the hot weather!

And of course there's mum and dad, but mum is hopelessly camera shy and I need to dig around for a decent photo of them both. In the meantime you can all gaze on all the ugly mugs up there!

Kelvin and Becs wedding

So one of the main reasons we went to the UK was to see my little (not so little anymore!) brother get married. It was a fantastic day with fabulous weather and here are a few shots...

The hen night the week before...
The girls had been out all day playing in the trees at a high-rise assault course. I joined them for pizza in the evening. You can't see them but we all had little fairy wings on...all very cute and it was a very hilarious evening!

The very proud JR family...
And the Kurth contingent from over the pond....
And my little bro all growed up with his beautiful wife...

Hello?

I have JUST arrived back from a wonderful 3 weeks back home in good old UK and will be inundating my blog with photos....so for any of you who regularly check my blog (!!!) fear not, more is to come!!

Oo baby, baby!

And here are the latest pictures of the baby at 20 weeks (my how time flies!). It is a GIRL and will be called Lilian Rachel Kurth after my Grandma and my best mate Rachie Bongers! YAY! Not so very fabulous scan photos (she wouldn't stop wiggling around) but you can see her trying to hide her face in the first one (on the left side) and I love the one underneath where she is waving her hand at the camera! Cool huh???

The scan was really quite amazing as you got to see every organ and every bone. Quite freaky really. Suffice to say she has everything she needs, it's all in the right place, and it looked like it was all working well (we could even see urine in her bladder - now how weird is THAT!), thank you Lord!

Eagle River Triathlon June 2006

Nathania and Sara, crazy as they are, wanted to do ANOTHER triathlon so I tagged along to be their cheer leading team. I will have to re-name myself the Leder Fan Club! Here they are in action on the last leg of the race (they were going way too fast on the bikes for my camera to manage a photo!!!)...





And here are the crazy ones themselves at the finish line. Sara got third in her age group and Nathania, who raced despite a nasty cold came 6th or 7th in hers (sorry Nat, can't remember exactly. Dang good whichever if you ask me!)

Camping in Hope, May 2006

Memorial weekend we headed to Hope with our church small group to go camping. Hope is on the other side of Cook Inlet from Anchorage and the views from the campsite were spectacular! I can never get enough of mountains so apologies if that's all there ever seems to be on my Blog...



We did get a little exercise and wandered down a trail that started at the campsite. It was really nice, even with the bugs for company!

Sara and Jay with their 5,000 dogs out for a walk. Sara is about 3 months ahead of me with pregnancy, and being a little short doesn't hide it well....whereas I, being tall, am not even remotely noticeable yet!

There's nothing like burgers on the open fire! YUMMMMMMMMMMMMMM

Gold Nugget Triathlon '06

Due to still-continuing baby-induced major puking I was unable to do the triathlon this year, so instead James and I went along to support our super fit wonderful friend Nathania (see picture below) and her sister Sarah. Nathania quite literally worked her butt off training for the big day, and it paid off as she came 55th out of over 1100 women, and was 5th in her age group! Isn't she just AMAZING?! We really are very proud of her.

...of course part of me is glad I couldn't do it as I think she would have whipped my butt.....


This is her sister Sarah strutting her stuff. She did amazingly well too. I am most impressed with them both!

Baby Fever!

Here is the mini-Kurth at 13 1/2 weeks old....

It actually has a head and arms and legs and all that! No longer a formless splodge! It's still a leech though - just a human looking one.... Amazing how something so small and cute could produce such puking and misery! Oh well!

This is the darth vader look...scary!

Heart Run 2006

James and I walked the 3 mile non-timed run but here is Nathania ready to start the timed run! She even made it into the newspaper the cheeky woman (see her blog on www.nrleder.blogspot.com)! It was a crazy day with a bazillion people competeing. There was a free hunk of yummy bread at the end though so it was all worth it!! Would have been nice if it was a little warmer than 0 degrees C though....

Cat in the cupboard

I just couldn't resist this....we are just so organized in our house that we even tidy the cat away....

...actually I was trying to find myself a movie to watch and Oreo took the opportunity to have a little rest. Daft animal likes small enclosed spcaes and will get into the cupboards in the kitchen if I gave him half a chance!

His most favourit spot at the moment though is the window...he likes to sit for ages watching all the birds!

Aaaahh cute or what!

Monkey business

So we have some news for you all......James and I are expecting a...
!! Actually I am hoping the end result is a little more human (but just as cute...................!!). So come November 28th (give or take a few days) we will be entering the very scary prospect of parenthood (oo er). In the meantime I am calling the baby a leech as it appears to be sucking every last ounce of energy from me as well as make me puke reguarly...and lots of other whine-worthy things that I won't bore you with. Really though, for the most part (when my head isn't over the toilet or lying on the couch trying to prevent my head being over the toilet) we are quite deliriously happy and are busy getting a room ready and getting all scared and stuff...watch this space!

Silly hats

So here is me and Nathania doing the usualt silly stuff...this time her church had a ladies night decorating hats....and here were ours. Bit nasty huh? We had a lot of fun though!

This is why you should NEVER put photos of your young self on your friend's computer...Nathania.....isn't she cuuuuuuuuuuute??

March 2006

So I am a bit behind on my posts I know (sorryyyyyyyyy....there is a good excuse honest!) so here are a few photos from when James and I went to the very posh Alyeska hotel in Girdwood for a night. We met up with my colleague Natalie and her husband (it was a free night courtesy of my work!) and then went for a hike on the Sunday.



This is how deep the snow was on the trail - you can just about see the wooden walk way way down there somewhere....


Natalie and Dave - Dave with his manly walking stick and Natalie doing something wierd with her hair...???

You're a putz!

It was my wonderful younger brother's birthday not so long ago, and apparantly he wasn't appreciating his card as much as we did......he he. But Kelvin, a putz in America is a term of endearment don't you know? Honestly, ignorant Brits! At least you GOT a card Vinny (late, but eventually...) and I think I even sent you a PRESENT too. GOSH I am SO generous!
Bye Putz....

Siblings on the other side of the pond

Here are a few pics of the siblings (and dog) over in the UK. Teegar is the family dog and one soppy thing. Kelvin (little bro) gets hitched to the Becs in July and Haden (oh so attractive picture...) is the older brother. These pics are stolen from Kelvins blog site (very useful boy)