I've been quietly and obsessively checking the "Where's My Refund" tool on the IRS website at least twice a day, and today it finally said AS's refund had been approved! They estimate it will direct-deposited the 13th and will show up a couple days later. Yippee!

It's $4769, so $4000 will go to NT's student loan and I'll set the remaining $769 aside to help pay mine and NT's taxes. When AS's state refund comes in, that will cover the rest of our tax bill.

I haven't sent our taxes out yet; will wait until we get the state refund to make sure we have plenty to cover what we owe.

AS also got another freelance check in the mail; the $250 we were expecting. That one is going to the student loan too, so I already set up a $250 payment that will probably come out of the account Monday and hopefully hit Tuesday.

I'll also be sending out a little over $1000 when we get paid on the 15th. If our paycheck adjustments work out the way I want them to, may even be able to tack another $120 or so onto that!

It's going to be a very fun couple of weeks totaling all this up. I reckon NT's Sallie Mae loan could get below $10K when it's all done.

I almost forgot: AS told me yesterday that she accepted another freelance job: $1000! She said she couldn't resist because she'd read my blog post about how we were only $1800 short of paying off the Sallie Mae loan this year. So now, make that $800.

Oh, and we had AA's birthday playdate today, and her little friend who's a year older came. As always, her parents brought several big boxes of outgrown clothes for AA! NT just got a huge bag from a co-worker recently too. We'll sort through and give some away, because it'll be too much to hold onto, but this means AA will be set for clothes for another year. Not counting underwear, we've probably bought about a dozen, maybe 20 pieces of clothing for both girls combined, ever, yet they have hundreds and hundreds, sorted in boxes by size and age, and we've given hundreds away on Freecycle too. It's a GREAT system. These clothes are getting at least three uses, sometimes more. And we don't even have to factor kids' clothing into our budget at all! Probably won't until well after they're done with daycare and THAT big expense is gone.

We invited 7 kids but only 2 could come. It was a perfect amount, because with our 2 that meant 4 kids running around. You don't need more than that in a little condo! It also means we have plenty of little party favors left over that we can probably hand out at SL's party.

We had a couple expenses eat into our grocery budget, so we have a small shopping list this week and are using a lot of stuff we already have. AS and NT are out at two stores now so I don't know how much it will be, but I have high hopes we'll be coming in under budget.