The Christmas of Crazy Hats

We are not hat people. The only time I wear a hat is if it is really, really cold or if I am gardening in the hot sun. Super-Hubby is slightly more likely to wear a hat than I am, due to his fair and easily sunburned skin, but even then, hats are rare. But somehow, this Christmas hats were everywhere.

Christmas Eve day dawned clear and very cold, and we all piled into my sister's Surburban and headed for Bisbee, to take a tour of the defunct copper mine. They suited us up in real live miner gear, including hard hats (as illustrated by myself and my youngest nephew, Jeremy) and heavy duty battery packs strapped to our waists to power our miner's lights.







Tom was too little for his own miner's hat, so he's wearing his cool ear-covering fleece cap from Old Navy. It's actually borrowed from the little girl across the street, but we won't tell Tom that. (We also won't tell him that he sleeps in her pink fleece sleeper bags.)
The mine was really interesting, but I have absolutely no need to ever go half a mile underground ever again. Once was enough. And cold. I can't imagine what it must have been like working there 10 hours a day. The tour guide said they used to keep mules in the mine to pull the cars, and the mules would be underground for 10 or 12 years, until they died. Most of the mules went blind because of the constant darkness.


Look, Daddy and baby Santas! My mom found a Santa hat just Tom's size, but the Santa booties (which were supposed to fit up to 18 mos) were way too small for his feet. We stuck them on anyway, for the picture.














Here is Super-Hubby in my sister's super hiking hat. Tom is staring off at the gorgeous view from an Arizona mountaintop. Tom spends a lot of time staring off into space, come to think of it.







And finally, me and Tom with a saguaro at Saguaro National Park. Those suckers are some big cacti. It takes a saguaro about 75 years to start growing arms; they can live over 200 years. Notice the hat: it is one of my father's. Since moving to the Southwest, he and mom have gone cowboy. It's kind of cute actually. They have boots and white cowboy hats and everything. Guess they're the good guys.