Red Hatters Shop and Dine in Old Mesilla Village, New Mexico

Saturday, May 11, 2019

Members of the New Mexico Roadrunner Chapter from Alamogordo, New Mexico joined three new Red Hat members from Chaparral, New Mexico and El Paso, Texas for shopping and dining. We got our wires crossed (It's the Red Hat way) and they went straight to the Hacienda de Mesilla while we waited at the town Plaza for them to shop with us. We finally communicated and joined up with them for lunch first.

The new Red Hat members are Queen Laura Kidwiler of the Sun City Hot Flashes who lives in Chaparral, NM; her Vice-Queen Shari Coffman of El Paso, Texas and Queen Susan Amtillon of the Chaparral Butterflies Chapter in Chaparral, New Mexico.

Their enthusiasm just bubbled over and we truly exercised #POWERofFUN visiting with each other and getting acquainted. We celebrated our Pink Hatter Alice Cuevas' birthday with kazoos of course and I keep a supply at hand so the new Red Hatters had their first experience kazooing Happy Birthday to Alice. We gifted them with their very own kazoos. Laura gifted us with adorable little decorated hats she made. All three had on purple shirts with the Red Hat logo and they had ordered red hats, but they didn't arrive in time so they put their creative juices together and decorated some they found and they looked adorable.

Queen Laura has invited me to attend their very first meeting once she is established and I am looking forward to being there in Chaparral which is about 70 miles from Alamogordo. We plan to do events together as time passes. It is just so wonderful to meet new Red Hatters and bask in their enthusiasm and sense of FUN.

When lunch was over, time had run out for Susan who owns a restaurant in Chaparral. Her daughter was graciously working in her place but Susan had to be back by 3:00 pm and it is about an hour
drive from Old Mesilla for her. We said our goodbyes, they left and we returned to the plaza to shop for a while.

L to R: Queen Laura Kidwiler, Vice Queen Shari Coffman, Queen Susan Amtillon and Carmen Veenpere

L to R: Queen Susan, Queen Ladybird aka Carla Kerr and Queen Laura

Our Birthday Girl, Alice Cuevas

Gail Swineford,The Royal Scribble aka Baroness Von Doolittle and Alice

Trudy Reese aka Lady Sunshine

Laura and Shari doing the selfie thing

We are back at the Plaza and this wedding party has just come out of the lovely old Catholic Church for wedding pictures in the gazebo

Beautiful bride

Wedding attendees - Doesn't she look classical and classy and he is the perfect escort!

Finally organized for the family wedding portrait

Queen Laura emailed me the pictures that she took so I am adding them on here.

Queen Ladybird (Carla) and Queen Laura

L to R: Trudy, Queen Ladybird (Carla) and Queen Laura

L to R: Trudy, Carla, Laura, Shari, Susan, Carmen, Gail and Alice

L to R: Alice, Susan, Carla, Carmen, Gail, Shari and Trudy

#POWERofFUN and you can tell from these photos that we indeed had FUN. We are looking forward to getting together again soon.

Thanks to Laura for your photos and thanks to Doug for processing them.

This is all I have to say for now.