{February Foodfest} Less than a week to go

(With the grocery budget, not the pregnancy.)

I think we're going to make it folks.

I just tallied our budget as of today, and we have 9 pounds (aka "quid") and 37 pence (aka "p" for those of you unfamiliar with British currency slang) left to spend on groceries this month.  That may not seem like a lot, but it includes a grocery order that I did online and will be delivered on Sunday, so we will have 9.37 for our last 4 days to cover any ingredients I may be missing for my meal plan that week.  And no I haven't made it already even though I ordered my groceries for the week - why do you ask?

Don't worry, I've gotten this far haven't I?  And we've reached 36 weeks of pregnancy today so the inevitable daily walk to Tesco will just help move things along faster, right?

March will be a fresh start!  And then a few weeks into it, I will have a baby and meal planning, budgeting, cooking in general will completely go out the window will be graciously taken over by my hubby (and the nice folks at church who have offered to bring us meals for 2 weeks).

On a more exciting note, the Ince family was spontaneous today and decided on a whim to take advantage of the beautiful day God gave us and skipped town for a jaunt in the neighboring royal burgh (pronounce "burra") of Linlithgow, home of Linlithgow Palace, birthplace of Mary Queen of Scots (not to be confused with her English cousin "Bloody Mary").

Because we went in the middle of the day on a Friday (in February no less), we had the ruined palace to ourselves - it was a blast!  Seth ran from room to room exclaiming, "OH WOW!" at every fireplace or bed of rocks he came across.  I can't wait to go back when I'm not 9 months pregnant and can really explore all of the nooks and crannies (and make it up all of the millions of stairs to actually see the whole place) with them.

Our admission was free thanks to the Heritage Scotland passes we bought last year, and we even got a discount in the gift shop, so we splurged and bought Seth a plastic sword after discovering it would only cost 2 quid!  He didn't really get the concept and kept unsheathing it and trying to use it as a  flute, so Taylor gave him a little sword fighting lesson while I skipped to the loo.  Taylor recounted to me when I got back that mid lesson, Seth spotted a picture of Queen Mary on a sandwich board, dropped his sword, ran over toward her squealing, "Mary!" like she was his long lost best friend.  He thought Seth was going to plant a kiss right there on the sandwich board. I explained to him that there is a picture of her in one of his children's books and I had told him her name.  Once.  Now every time he looks at that book, when he gets to the page with her on it, he gets super excited and squeals, "Mary!"  I was so tickled that he recognized her here and had the same excited reaction.  It almost makes me want to name his baby sister "Mary." But not really.

I will post photos tomorrow - having computer issues at the moment and this pregnant mama needs to go to bed!

Happy Friday, y'all!