Doomsday

Our final full day of Hot Springs and we were going to tour one of the bath houses that the city is known for. Then, the plans that evening were to enjoy a nice dinner out before we headed back home in the morning. To say that this day was bittersweet is an understatement. Obviously, it was bittersweet because the vacation was coming to an end, but it was so much more than that. However, more on this later...

That morning we had a big breakfast at the house and settled Braden down for a nap before our busy afternoon/evening. Mom and Mark headed into town and went to have a spa treatment at a bath house that was still in use. We were going to meet them that afternoon to tour a bath house that was no longer being used and allowed visitors to see what it looks like.

Here are the girls before we met up with Mom and Mark. Not sure what the statue was for, but it seemed like a good place to take a picture.


The tour of the bath house was cool, but I somehow managed to not take a SINGLE PICTURE!! I'm not sure how this is possible, but it happened, even though the camera was on my shoulder the entire time. We were able to see some cool things in the bath house, but I guess the memories will stay in my mind.

After the tour, we headed back to the house to get ready for dinner that evening. This is a place where I am having a hard time to put in words what happened and honestly, I don't want to dwell on the evening of this day. Hot Springs was not a place that I would want to vacation again, but up to this point I had made some wonderful memories that we had shared with family. However, upon returning to the house a very dark event occurred and to say that the end of the trip was tragic would be an understatement.

Upon arriving to the house, we discovered that the house had been broken into. Tragically, things were taken and most of them can be replaced, but one of those things was dear to my mom, her wedding ring. Bailey's earrings were also taken, which caused a lot of questions and things that were very hard for me to explain to a seven and five-year old. They just couldn't understand why someone would do this and to be honest, I couldn't either. How can I explain to my daughters when I myself had the same confusion?

As I said before, I don't want to dwell too much about this negative experience and want to be able to look back twenty years from now and remember the positive time that we spent together as a family.

Our fancy dinner turned into order Papa John's pizza and then bath time for the kiddos in the jacuzzi tub.