A New Fad?

Disclaimer: I love fashion, but I'd never consider myself a fashionista...

But apparently, now that I'm into my 5th month of my pregnancy and my normal clothes are a bit snug, I'm now officialy "with the times"...at least according to the teenagers that shop at Brass Plum at Nordstroms BECAUSE as of this past weekend, I'm now an owner of three pairs of ELASTIC WAISTED JEANS! Seriously...whomever from the fashion world decided that elastic waists would be back IN could not have timed this more perfectly for me. Also, a huge thank you to my dear friend Michelle (who is not pregnant) for introducing me to these jeans. I oftentimes copy her fashion ideas and can not thank her enough for grabbing these jeans off the rack for me.

A few key words in the online description that made me smile...

Second Disclaimer (Marge - I sound like you): These jeans are not for pregnant women only as a few of my non-pregnant friends have gone out and purchased them (per Michelle's advice) and love them as much as I do. Check them out here...rumor has it they're currently on sale.

Holiday Season is in Full Swing

It's no secret, I LOVE Christmas and everything about it...actually I take that back...the one thing I don't love is the Christmas Shoes song. If the options in a game of "Would you Rather" were to listen to Christmas Shoes on repeat OR listen to nails on chalkboard for an hour - I'd pick the latter. Is that mean to say I don't like a Chistmas song? Hopefully, this comment doesn't prevent Santa from showing up at my house this year. As I've mentioned before, I have my Pandora set to Christmas music, all day, everyday so it was of no surprise to me when an email appeared from Pandora today asking me to take a Christmas music survey. I thought the questions were kinda cute and figured I'd share...so here you go...(if you're bored, I'd love to see what your answers are - I've put an * next to mine)

What song would you most like to hear while being kissed under a Mistletoe?
Santa Baby
*All I Want for Christmas is You
I saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus
A Holly Jolly Christmas

What song would send you running out of the mall store the quickest?
Anything sung by a Muppet
*Anything sung by a Chipmunk
All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth

What song is most likely to make you book tickets home for Christmas?
I'll Be Home for Christmas
Wonderful Christmastime
*It's The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year
Orinoco Flow by Enya

Where do you most like hearing holiday music?
*At home in front of a fire
In the car
In the mall
While shopping for gifts online
Outside, Christmas tree shopping

What holiday song are you most likely to sing along to?
Rudolph the Red-Nose Reindeer
Frosty the Snowman
*It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas
Silver Bells
Hells Bells by AC/DC

Overall, holiday music makes you feel:
Jolly
*Merry
Cozy
Eggnoggy
Full of Good Cheer

After recomendations from a couple of friends, I finally make the trek out to Trader Joes in Kirkland (Higher-ups of TJ's: if you're reading this, PLEASE bring one to Kent!!) and bought the Chewy Eggnog Cookies - honestly, the most chewy delicious-ness ever...the box needs to be taken away from me, but I think baby is really enjoying them and who steals from a baby? I also caved and bought the Milk Chocolate Salted Caramel Butter Cookies and I'll be giving those a taste test tonight...the name alone scares me, but I can't pass up a new treat.

Each year we add new ornaments to our collection from trips we've gone on throughout the year. This year we added about four different boat ornaments bought during our trip back east - any sailboat or fishing boat we come across is usually purchased. BUT the coolest ornament on our tree this year was a gift from my brother-in-laws girlfriend Chelsea - how cute and thoughtful is this??

"Ohhhhh We're Halfway There..."

Woah Livin' on a prayer
Take my hand and we'll make it - I swear
Woah Livin' on a prayer- The sweet words of Bon Jovi 

Today marks the official halfway point (20 weeks) of Baby Rinabarger's life in utero. So, in honor of his tiny little body and this milestone, I figured I'd post a photo of my progress. As I've said to many that ask, there isn't much to see, but here you go. Please forgive the cell phone photo quality - I was going to have Steve take a photo, but he left before I was ready this morning. As I'm typing, he's quite active right now - probably curious as to when he'll be fed lunch.

In other news, I'm proudly sporting my Cougar shirt today amongst a large group of huskies and hoping that every bit of Courgar pride, I can contribute, will help them pull out an upset victory tomorrow in Pullman.

It's a...

From the very beginning, we had a strong suspicion that the bean in my belly was a boy {good parental instincts, I guess} and today those predictions were confirmed! Come April, he'll be making his debut and we could not be more excited. After taking measurements, multiple times, and looking at measurments from previous appointments, my due date is officially confirmed for April 21.(and has not changed once).  Baby Boy Rinabarger appears to be growing strong and in excellent health - two statements from the technician today that gave us an overwhelming sense of happiness.

People keep telling me "let the shopping begin" but little do they know that the shopping began about 4 years ago when my obsession with childrens clothing (and just about anything involving babies) truly took off...it's a serious condition, that I will gladly take to a new level with my boy.  I think it's time to invest in a larger "bin" for all of my finds.

November "Arctic Blast"

Ever since I can remember, the local news has gone to town with their extreme winter weather coverage. I believe yesterdays storm has been referred to as Arctic Blast 2010 so that's what I'll call it. Friends across the country laugh at our inability to maintain any sort of normalcy during one of these "freak" winter storms. It's almost like the people and the city of Seattle can NEVER quite be prepared for yet another crazy/sudden storm. Yesterday,I had a brief flashback to past winter commutes home so I left work at 1:30 and was home faster than normal. I finished my work day from my home office and worked from home again today. I have a feeling we're going to be in for a long, cold winter...maybe by the time the next storm hits the city will be a bit more prepared - ah probably not. As I write, it's currently 14 degrees out and only twenty days about it was 74 degrees.

Here are a few of my photos re-capping my past 24 hours.



The sunrise this morning







Sunset out our backyard

Hope everyone enjoyed their snow day and weren't one of the thousands stranded on I-5 for 5 hours last night.

* Random Ramblings *

I caved...I listened to Christmas music almost the entire weekend while I was in the car, which was a large part of my weekend with my day trip adventure down to Longview on Saturday. I couldn't resist - I whistled, I sang, I smiled - it made me happy and I realized that I could no longer deny myself something that was going to keep me entertained during my alone time in the car.

During my roadtrip, I passed a restaurant with a sign just like this one (I didn't stop to take a photo so I borrowed one from the googles)...

WHAT ON EARTH WOULD MAKE YOU THINK THAT $1 CHINESE FOOD WAS ACCEPTABLE??

Nothing about a $1 Chinese meal sounds good to me. My stomach hurt just at the thought of what might be included.

Have you tried the Limited Edition Haagan-Daz Peppermint Bark ice cream?

 OH.MY.G

If you haven't, PLEASE buy some tonight for dessert - you'll thank me later. P.S. It's only available until January.

Too Early...

For Christmas Music???

In my option, YES! It's way too early! Have people forgotten that we have another holiday to get through...otherwise known as Thanksgiving...BEFORE Christmas, which is still 40 days away? This past Friday, two of my twelve preset stations in my car started their Christmas coverage. I start my "continuous holiday favorites" playlists the day after Thanksgiving...Pandora at work, 106.9 and 95.7 in the car and Comcast 'Sounds of the Season' at home. I've got it down, but I'm not ready...just yet. So, for the time being, I'll cringe each time I scan through my preset stations and end up hearing one second of my favorite Carpenters or Johnny Mathis tune...or maybe it's just time I learn how to use my cd player.

In other news, our little RinaCoffeyBean is healthy AND two weeks from today we find out if our babe is a boy or a girl!

Halloween Weekend in Bend

Friday night I flew down to Bend to spend the weekend with Megs, Galen, Ava and Miles. As always, the trip was perfection. We took a bunch of photos, wrestled/begged/bribed Miles to smile in a family photo, relaxed, talked about my babe, watched (some pretty horrible) football, shopped, watched as my friends drank Deschutes Jubelale (favorite seasonal beer) while I enjoyed water and capped off the weekend with dinner and trick-or-treating with the Vigelands. Only thing missing was Steve as he opted to stay in Seattle to celebrate Halloween...and boy did he get into character...shaved off his beard and his hair to play the part of Popeye...I'm anxiously awaiting for his hair to grow back (fingers crossed that the hair isn't gone for good).

Ole dressed up as turkey leftovers

Weekend Update...

...with Amy Poehler and Seth Meyers

I wish my weekend involved Amy and Seth...in fact, if I could choose 10 celebrity best friends, these two would definitely be on that list.

Despite the fact that Amy and Seth will most likely never play a roll in my weekend, I had an excellent weekend. Saturday night was spent celebrating Court and my birthdays at the back bar at Bastille in Ballard - if you've never been, go now...or for your next date night or girls night. The food is delicious and the ambiance perfect.  The night was spent with a few of my favorite girls - Court, Rothie, Delane, Jamie, Ruthie, Cabe, Michelle and Crystal. Dinner, drinks and catching up with these girls was the perfect wrap-up to my birthday celebrations.

Saturday morning I had a photoshoot, ran errands and saw a movie with Steve...errrrr...Jackass 3D. I'm not gonna lie, it wasn't the most thought provoking, inspiring or educational movie ever, but it was pretty darn funny.

Sunday we went to our first Hawks game of the year and had a great time...mainly because of the win, but also because we got to spend some time with our friends Lynne and Joey and ran into a bunch of other people we knew from college. Thank you Marge for the find on the undercovered seats! The rain on Sunday was the type of weather that I think out-of-towners believe to be the typical "Seattle weather." Thankfully, our seats were undercover, but the walk back to King St. Station was WET - torrential downpour kind of wet, but it was all worth it to see our team clench the top spot in the NFC West.

A favorite game to play during the game is "Where's Marge?" Marge works for the Hawks, therefore, she's at every.single.home.game - always to the stadium bright and early and always dressed to the nines. She is usually in the same spot, so finding her isn't too difficult, but this time we had our 300mm zoom lens so we had to take of pic of her in action.

Musical Trifecta

Most everyone knows that Seattle is a hot spot for musical talent and venues. And after living in Seattle for years, I finally had the chance to check out the famous Crocodile and see three spectacular bands perform, last night for the Seattle Heineken City Arts Festival (10/20 - 10/23).  A huge thanks to my sister Megs and her boyfriend Branden for letting Jamie and I weasel our way up to the front row.

First up was Lucy Schwartz. Her sound is a bit old soul/low-key/jazzy-pop combined with drums, harmonica, piano, guitar and percussion.  She has a beautifully unique voice and puts on a crowd pleasing perfomance.  Next time she's in the area, I'll definitely be back to see her.

After Lucy's trio performed, the hottest band to come out of Seattle, in most recent memory, The Head And the Heart, put on an awesome performance. If I were an A&R manager for a record label {dream job!}, I'd sign this band in two seconds...seriously...mark my words...they're gonna be big. They opened for Vampire Weekend a few weeks ago at the Paramount!  They remind me a lot of Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros. Check out Jamie's post from a few weeks ago on this newfound musical love here.

Next up were the shows headliners, The Weepies.  The singer-songwriter/husband-wife duo put on a great mellow folk style show.   The cheery lyrics, acoustic guitars and tambourines made for some fun audience interaction.  Unfortunately, as the night went on, and after 3 hours of standing, this pregnant mama and Jamie called it quits mid-way through their set and I missed my favorite song by them, World Spins Madly On (check it out here). 

BUT on the plus side of an early departure, as we walked out of the Crocodile, we crossed paths with this musical icon as he stood amongst the normal folk, enjoyed the same awesome tunes as us.

{ New Scent }

For my birthday this week, my co-worker Justin bought me a new perfume that I had never smelled before - Gucci Guilty - which just came out last month. One spray of this Guilty pleasure (pun intended) and I was hooked on a new scent. Gucci Guilty has notes of mandarin, peach, pink pepper, geranium, lilac, patchouli and amber (ideal scent for fall and winter)...no, I didn't sniff out those notes out myself, I got that from a bit of googling.


When it comes to perfumes, I'm usually a one or two scent kinda gal, but the perfumes I've most recently purchased and will have around for quite some time are as follows:



1. Bvlgari - Amethyst
2. Carolina Herrera - Carolina
3. Nanette Lepore -
4. Versace - Versus
5. Calvin Klein - Euphoria
6. Thierry Mugler - Alien

* If you're looking for a scent to add to your Christmas list, I would highly recommend Gucci Guilty.

* 31

Turning 31 yesterday was better than I ever could have imagined...

I originally looked at 31 as the 10 year anniversary of my 21-run and then felt really old when I thought about the difference between 21 to 31 being the same as 11 to 21...have I lost you yet? And now I'm 31 and my husband is 28! Age ain't nothin' but a number, right? In my 31st year, I'll be celebrating a lot, but most importantly the arrival of my first child. I used to think (maybe around 12 years old) that I'd be married no later than 25 and probably have 2 or 3 kids by 30...boy have times changed. The thing is, I'm perfectly content with how my cards have been played and can honestly say that I'm now counting down the days until my 32nd birthday when I can celebrate with my 6 month old.

I was completely spoiled rotten this weekend by my adorable husband...a new lens for my new camera, massage at a spa downtown, dinner at the Space Needle, a night at the Edgewater Hotel, shopping, coffee and flowers at Pike Place, brunch with my in-laws, relaxing at Carkeek Park and dinner with my family. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, to my loving family and friends for the sweet messages over the weekend - I feel so blessed and fortunate to have each of you playing a special part in my life.

Me and my birthday twin - Miss Addi - at her 3rd birthday party Saturday morning. I love her wavy hair, huge smile and dimples. She'll most likely be taller than me by her 5th birthday.


My handsome man

Our room at the Edgewater


View from dinner




Complete relaxation - perfect end to the perfect day

Sunday morning sunrise, looking west from our room






Carkeek Park

Huge shout out to the Sun Gods for providing the most picture perfect fall back-drop for my already ideal weekend.

Flash back...me...31 years ago with my parents at Evergreen Hospital...I think my mom might be clenching her teeth wondering what she's gotten herself into.