Hot Springs

This week Tom and I took a break from the work on the house.  Here are some pictures of the floors as far as they were finished.

The kitchen into the laundry room

The living room and hall

We snuck away and went to Hot Springs.  Actually, it was a writing retreat and I invited Tom to come with me.  He's such a good companion. He fixes me food and snuggles.

My goal was to get up at 5am and write until noon.  We fudged the wake up times a few mornings, but mostly I did that.  Then on Wednesday, I was on a roll and kept writing for most of the afternoon as well.  I got a lot done and it was a most productive week for me.

Tom read books and watched TV. We also went walk/running most afternoon.  And the first day out, Tom went looking for the Walmart. He found a Re-Store as well, and when he stopped, he found there were actually three of them in town. So in the afternoon on Tuesday, we went re-store shopping. We might have found a few more thrift stores as well.

One afternoon we went to down town Hot Springs.  We walked past the bath houses

 and down the promenade.

We visited some antique stores and drove up the mountain to the look-out at the top. We stopped at a rock store to admire the stones and buy a piece of quartz crystal for a friend.

The flowers and trees were further into spring 4 hours south of Mountain Home. Dogwoods and redbud were in full bloom. They have a wonderful flowering red bush. And wisteria hung on many trees and fences.It's fragrance filled the air.

We had planned on staying until Saturday, but there was a baptism on Saturday... and a wedding...

and a Relief Society activity and dinner and then the Women's session of General Conference in the evening.  So we drove back on Friday evening.

It was a busy Saturday.  Then on Sunday was Ava's ward conference.  I taught the RS lesson and did some training and went out visiting sisters afterwards.  Tom came with me this time. It was so nice to have him along. He hung out for the first training part. But after church he was in charge of a bishop's training, so I ended up waiting a bit for him.

The message was on family history and temple work. Of linking families together and our responsibility to be the strong links to our ancestors and to the gospel to keep our families strong. A member of the stake presidency talked of his mother doing family history work and writing family stories.  She said that families that stopped paying tithing... even good people who did good things in other ways... the next generation fell away from the church.  I think sometimes we don't see the influence of our actions until years down the line.

It made me want to stay strong and do all I can to keep my family strong.