Tuesday, December 27, 2011

Christmas in Canada!

We've been in Canada for nearly 2 months, which is very hard to believe. And we officially celebrated Thanksgiving and Christmas north of the border. We were blessed to have both of our families visit us already here, so we've had the opportunity to start seeing some sights!

For Thanksgiving, Jeff's parents came to visit us. We hadn't moved into our house yet, so unfortunately, they weren't able to see our new home, but we did get to see a bunch of fun places while they were here. We headed up to Banff for the first time while they were here. Banff is simply AMAZING. It should be on your "must see" list!


We headed up to Lake Louise, which in the summer is a crystal blue lake surrounded by beautiful in the mountains. In the winter though, it's a frozen, snow covered lake surrounded by mountains. Still a pretty scene no matter what!


Just one of hundreds of beautiful views here!

We were so thankful to have Jeff's parents be here for Thanksgiving! Since it wasn't an actual holiday here, (Canadian Thanksgiving is in October) it was a bit strange, but we still cooked up some turkey and fixings and had a traditional dinner! We did some shopping, saw the Calgary tower and just enjoyed spending time together.

Towards the end of December, it was my family's turn to head up north. We headed to Banff again for some skiing. While there, we celebrated Jeffro's 26th birthday. Here he is with the cookie cake I baked for him!




Then we headed to Sunshine Village for some skiing. Wonderful skiing and beautiful views.


Here's John!



Overlooking the town of Banff right before sunset. Just to the left of the picture, there were two mountain goats hanging out and eating a little dinner as we stood there.


My family checking out the views.

Once we got back to Calgary, we checked out a few more sights and celebrated Christmas by heading to Christmas Eve service, opening presents and having a little Christmas dinner. My family headed back on Christmas day, so it was very sad, but we had the opportunity to celebrate with some friends here that evening with dinner and games, so it still made for a fun day!

People keep telling us that this has been the mildest Calgary winter they've seen in years, so I have a feeling that we may be in for a shock when the real winter weather hits in January and February. I just received some brand new ski boots from Jeff though, so bring on the snow! 

From Canadia,

Emily and Jeff

Sunday, November 27, 2011

Heading North!

Our tour de America started with a visit to some great friends, Matt and Jaclyn, who moved to Clarksville, TN a couple of months ago. It was wonderful to see their house and visit with them for a bit before we moved far away. Jaclyn even made a traditional Canadian dessert, Nanaimo bars, for us to try!
Next we visited St. Louis to see my parents and enjoy a little midwestern cuisine. We tried Pappy's Smokehouse (a Man vs. Food restaurant we had seen on the Food Network) and it was delicious. It was also super fun just to spend some time with my family. We also took a few pictures for some family photos, and they turned out great!


 Dad and Mom Sutterfield and John with Jeff and I, we'll see you in a few weeks for skiing.


We also had the opportunity to visit Fulton and see Jeff's parents. We visited some of Jeff's extended family and went to church before heading out. Our last stop in Missouri was Kansas City to eat a (too) quick dinner with good friends who live there. Hopefully one day we may live there again and be close to them again!

Once we started the real drive up to Canada, we decided to make a few quick stops to check out some tourist locations. I saw signs for the Corn Palace in South Dakota. I'd always heard about the Corn Palace, so I asked Jeff if we could stop. He was not thrilled by this idea at all, but he humored me and we made a quick stop. I was surprised to find out that the Corn Palace is basically a glorified gymnasium that houses concerts and events. And apparently there are the Corn Palace Days sometime in the summer. Not too much to actually see there, but hey, at least we can say we've been. :)

They change the corn (and the design of the building) every year. The first corn palace was made in 1905ish. Kind of crazy they've been doing it for that long!    

One of our favorite stops was the Badlands in South Dakota. One of the coolest National Parks we have ever been to. If you ever have the opportunity to see them, it is well worth the trip. We were there right before sunset, so we got a pretty awesome view.


So beautiful! And the park seemed to go on forever!

Another shot. 

And just one more...



We also saw Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse on our way through South Dakota. Definitely some neat sites that you should see sometime in your life! We had to buy a yearly parking pass at Mount Rushmore, so anyone with a TN license plate who may want to see Mount Rushmore, we can hook you up! :)


We just finished up a great weekend visit from Jeff's parents for American Thanksgiving. It wasn't a holiday here in Canada, which made for an interesting day, but we had a lot of fun, tried some Canadian cuisine and got to see some pretty neat things while they were here. More posts to come soon for sure! Also, we will be moving into our house here in Calgary this week, so hopefully I can put up some pictures of the new pad soon!

Until next time from north of the border, eh!

Jeff and Em




Tuesday, November 15, 2011

See ya Tennessee!

We had the opportunity to see and do so many wonderful things during our time living in Tennessee, but all good things must come to an end. We got the dreaded moving news at the end of September, and this time, it was a bit different. We found out that not only would we be moving, but we would be moving to another country, heading north of the border to Canada.

So, in honor of our big move, we thought we would look back on our last 6 months of our time in Tennessee and share some of our favorite moments.


We took a Saturday and headed down to Knoxville, which is about an hour and a half from where we live. We checked out the downtown area, ate lunch, went up in the world's fair tower, and of course went shopping. It's a neat town with a lot of fun things to see downtown.


We also took a weekend trip to Birmingham to see a friend get married and on the way back home, we stopped in Chattanooga and went up in the Incline Railway on Lookout Mountain. It was a fun day, with great weather. We also ate some brunch, walked in a fun downtown park and just enjoyed getting to see the city.

A view overlooking Chattanooga.

The Sutterfield family came to town in May and we went to the Smokies one last time. Such a pretty place, no matter what time of year we are there.

One of our most fun trips was our weekend in Nashville last July. We stayed near downtown, checked out lots of local country music and ate some really good food. It was a super fun time!

Checking out downtown Nashville

A shot of downtown Nashville's Broadway Street at night.

And the reason we headed to Nashville, the Tennessee Press Association Awards. It was a great experience and I walked away with an award for a feature story I wrote!

And we finally got to take a long-awaited trip to Charleston, SC. I had wanted to visit for a very long time and we finally got to go over my birthday weekend in July. It was one of the prettiest places I've ever visited and I definitely hope we get to go back.

Here's Jeff enjoying some oysters. They were pretty tasty!

Taking a boat tour! It was fun, but very hot.

And one last Charleston shot. Such a beautiful place!

Well, that is just a short summary of what filled our last couple of months in Tennessee. It was a great place to live and we are thankful for all the memories and friends we had after living there.

So, on to the next place... Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Stay tuned for some great road trip shots as we trekked up here and also some pictures of the new place we call home.

Sincerely from the Great White North,

Jeff and Em

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Anniversary Getaway

We got to do the quintessential East TN vacation spot for our anniversary.... cabin weekend in the smokies! We ended up having great weather and a beautiful cabin, and an all-around awesome weekend! Cheers to TWO great years so far, and many, many more to come! Here are a few photos from the weekend:

A daytime view of the inside of our cabin. Check out that view through our HUGE windows! Unbelievably pretty!

Just one of the beautiful landscapes I got a picture of. We have a few short rain showers while we were there, but it was so neat to watch the storms come over the mountains.

One more.... So great.

Jeff got to experience his very first Hard Rock Cafe. Did you know, the
only Hard Rock Cafe in Gatlinburg, TN is the only one in the whole world. Who knew?
I suggested to Jeff that we should renew our vows, but he said the vows stuck the first time. :)

We also swung by Ole Smoky Moonshine distillery.
Quite the funny experience, and a little bit of a tourist trap.
But hey, it was free!

Next stop, Smoky Mountain National Park!

Of course, we had to go straight to the stop
(at least the top that is open in non-peak winterish times)

We did a little hiking. I just wanted to be able to
officially say I had been on the Appalachian Trail :)

The national park has about a gazillion
awesome spots to stop and take pictures.

We brought a picnic lunch and just ate on a
huge rock in the middle of a creek.

Look at that babbling brook.

Alright, enough beautiful mountain scenes. I'll end for now. But don't worry, I have another huge groups of pictures to put on here very soon (featuring another fun weekender trip that we took recently!)

Until next time,

em and jeffro

Friday, February 11, 2011

Trucking along in TN. And a new goal for 2011.

The holidays are behind us, and it ALMOST feels like spring is around the corner. Thought it was a good time to update the blog about what we have been up to these last few months... So here goes:

We celebrated Jeff's 25th birthday! We had our friend Brett down for the weekend and celebrated with a little cookie cake and ice cream!

Happy Birthday Jeffro!

2nd Annual Robertson Christmas Tree! Decorated in Mizzou ornaments.

The Robertson Christmas card photo! Us with Rambo and Dixie!

For Jeff's birthday we went to a huge light display at Bristol Motor Speedway! Combining the best of two world's for Jeff: Christmas and Nascar. It was by far the biggest Christmas display we have ever seen! It took about an hour and a half to drive through, but it was well worth the time! After the lights, we went to one of Jeff's favorite restaurant in the area, Mellow Mushroom.

The display as we went into the race track!

Brett giving a thumb's up as we finished driving around the track.
It was pretty crazy to drive on a Nascar track with the huge bank!

We ventured home for a few days around Christmas. We really didn't take many pictures, but on our way home, at about hour 7 of driving, we decided to pull off and make a historical learning stop. Who would have known that we drive right by the very first Kentucky Fried Chicken?! That's right, the first place that Colonel Sanders served up his secret family original recipe chicken is in rural south central KY.


The very first KFC

"The birth of a legend"

A few artifacts.

Me meeting the Colonel himself.

And the beautiful view as we enter into the final
stretch toward our little home in TN.

While my family ventured off to Utah to go skiing, we decided to have our own southeastern skiing adventure. We went to Snow Place in Beckley, WV with our friend, Brett, who has also became our travel buddy :) It snowed a ton before we went, so it was actually really good skiing!

Eat your heart out Utah!
Pretty impressive for east coast, West Virginia skiing!

My ski buddy/mountain man and I.
I think he decided the beard was appropriate us in WV.

On the lift! Looking back at Brett!

So many fun things already this year! And, I'm making a goal! To update this thing WAY more! At least once a month (if not more) so that those friends and family far away from us can keep up with what we are doing! We miss home somethin' fierce, but are making the most of our time in our little East TN town!

Until next time,

Your favorite Missourians, living it up big in the Volunteer State!