We made it through the first holiday month and didn't put anything on the credit cards. One of our student loans has gone into repayment because my husband has dropped below half time. With this comes a monthly payment of $178 and capitalized interest in the amount of $444. I can't wait until they are gone. So even though we paid close to $2000 towards our debt, with accumulated interest we only paid down our debt by $1323 bringing the total to $97480. I stared work this month and after a week of working received a email that there was a four week waiting period from when my contract was requested until it would be put into effect so I won't get paid for any work completed this month. December 19th it becomes active for 90 days before I have to put a request for a renewal. This could be a blessing in disguise though. I have two weeks left of school and am feeling a little stressed with the amount of work I still need to do for it. This will give me time to finish that and get ready for the holidays. We leave to visit family on the 12th-20th and then my in-laws fly in on the 21st-Jan 5th to visit. It's going to be a long month. My husband and I have decided not to do gifts for each other this year and the kids each get two gifts from us. In the spirit of giving, our girls each put together a box for operation Christmas child and we donated gifts from each of the girls to the special needs ministry at our church. Next year my hope is to adopt a local family and provide Christmas for them. Someone did this for my family a few years when I was younger and it made such an impact on me and my family I would love to do it for someone else.