Journey of the Wolf and Raven

14 18 July 2026

My, how time flies. With all the excitement that happened with the Forth of July, posting things seems to have fallen by the wayside in the crush of life.

Notable events over the last two weeks is that the kids have continued their swimming program. This weekend, they are having the meet that finishes up their program. You can see the photos Meagan has taken here:
https://photos.argentwolf.org/index.php?/category/79

We completed our home school evaluation for the year, which checks off that administrative box for this school year. We are looking into the Unique Abilities scholarship for Arya, so we have a series of medical appointments and evaluations for her to do. We should have that wrapped up in September and the application in.

I got the taxes done, finally! I had to make a couple tools to catch up on all the data entry. If you use GnuCash, you may find them useful. One is a tool that processes online purchase data so you can import it. The other creates invoices and statements for customers. You can find them both at these links below:

https://github.com/thystra/gnucash-invoice-importer-tool

https://github.com/thystra/gnucash-invoice-batch-creator

I have found ChatGPT to be helpful in server management. I continue to tune the websites and other parts of the server. Nextcloud has been set up and is very useful for file management and collaboration. I’ve been using the video conferencing part as a replacement for Zoom, and am quite happy with it. I set up Paperless and that has been good for document management. The photo projects are still waiting for me to get to them. I’ve got a couple other projects to do, such as improving documentation for my server and web hosting.

At times we’ve been battling the feeling of being ‘whelmed’ or ‘overwhelmed’ – can you just be ‘whelmed’? The swimming and other sports activities keep us busy. I’m glad the kids have had a good time at swimming, but it does take a big part of the day away for them to do that and they are pretty wiped out at the end of it.

We are battling the piles of stuff we have, we are slowly getting rid of excess child clothes, which is a big deal for Meagan due to emotional attachment. I’m working through some other stuff that we were given to sell; I need my shop back. It has also been Florida in the Summer, and the bathroom remodel project has stalled out. I need to get back to that.

We are also trying to get a couple of our small business ventures off the ground. I have the bounce house one about ready to go. I need to make some phone calls next week on some insurance questions. Then I need to push forward on our chicken rental plan.

I’ve also been playing with member programs/plugins here on the site. I set up an event management plugin which allows me to send out E-vites for birthday parties and manage RSVPs without using a third party. I’d like to set up one where folks can join/subscribe directly on the site, instead of having to use Patreon. Currently, though, that’s not a big concern.

After Scout Camp, I took a break from bread. I got back into it recently, changing a few things up. I’m going to try a rye sourdough bread next. We’ll see how that goes.

We continue to look ahead at a future homestead property, but the biggest thing we’ve seen so far is the prices are way out of whack and beyond what we can afford. So, we continue to search and watch, learning about various areas and their peculiarities.

Along with this, is personal health.

My handy dandy weight chart. I was doing good going into December 2025, but then after the New Year, we got into goats and I started to help out by drinking milk and other things, and put on a few pounds. So now, I’m back on the wagon, so to speak, and working to shed those extra pounds. Once it cools off again, I’ll get back to hiking with Jarek and Arya.

We have fundraising to do for Scouts as well this coming year, so be on the look out for that!

So, I’ll be catching up with some pictures and other events here in a few separate posts, but for now it’s kid feeding time (again!)


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