Little Rays of Sunlight? Day 22 of My 52 Days of Summer

I have been feeling rather down this week. With all the problems in the swim club I have just had a really had time getting out of the dark cloud. Then this week Allen's car died. We thought he had it fixed when he and his friend put a new radiator in (and got it changed quite easily!) but today it seems to have a new problem. Hopefully it's something that our mechanic can quickly fix - maybe they just didn't get things hooked up quite right.

Tonight our crazy kids decided to try some more independence skills and they took the bus downtown to go to Shakespeare in the Park. This left me home alone for the evening as Allen was off on an appointment. It was really great to have some time to myself. Luckily, I listened to a really interesting podcast today. It was about women in the church and the importance of women having a voice in the church and easing the pain some women are experiencing. It was about people and the things that they go through when they are ostracized or excluded from a group that they were a part of. It really helped me work through some of my feelings about the swim club's issues.

A couple of points I really liked about women in the church:

• Elder Ballard's book, Counselling with our Councils, says: One of my main purposes in writing this book is to encourage priesthood leaders to invite the sisters to more fully participate in developing solutions to the difficult problems facing members of the church. 

• If you are within an organization and you damage relationships you lose your ability to bring about change.

Oh....to add to the kid's story. After Shakespeare in the Park somehow they ended up at Olympic Plaza (not sure how that happened....they're not that close together!) and there was a festival there. They called me to see if they could stay. Seems they didn't have enough change for the bus ride home (although, Peirce seemed to have a different story in the background). Allen picked them up after his appointment. Phew!! Glad to see they didn't get kidnapped and shipped to some third world Latin hovel.