christmas card & letter 2010

December 2010- Merry Christmas & Happy New Year from the Worrell Family.  Our Chirstmas card for 2010:

And our first attempt at a Christmas letter.  We've wanted to do one for many years, just never seemed to be able to pull it together.  But somehow even though this year has been our busiest December ever we managed to do it.  So what if it I was up till 2am one night writing it and 4am the next night getting them copied, folded and stuffed into the 300+ Christmas cards we mailed out.  The point is we documented a snapshot of our family life into a letter at Christmas time.  We hope everyone enjoyed it.  Here it is in case you missed it:

The trail we followed this year is coming to an end, and looking back we can sum it up with one word: BLESSED. We now have two wonderful and healthy boys, Pecos- 4 years- and Brazos who will be 7 months on Christmas day. We did not set out to name them after Texas rivers, we just liked the names. But in keeping with the theme, if a baby girl ever shows up around here we’d have to name her Guadalupe!

Pecos earned a new nickname; Tuffy is learning at a young age that the life of a Top Hand can be hard on the body. In February of this year, Pecos had a horse accident and was air-lifted via helicopter to a San Antonio hospital. Since Erin was 5 months pregnant they wouldn’t let her go along for the ride. So he braved the trip alone with the flight crew. Not only tough but incredibly brave too! Through nothing less than a miracle from God, he healed up perfectly with no ongoing complications and proved his toughness once and for all.

At four years old, Pecos is a cowboy through and through. He wears a hand-me-down hat from Casey every day and prefers boots and jeans even though Erin insists he wear shorts in the hot Texas summer. His thoughts are consumed by everything ranching and even has his own (imaginary) cowboys named Jimmy Dale, June-July, August and newest to the crew, Boudreaux. He gives them instructions daily on which bulls to pen, run through the squeeze chute and load up in the trailer. When Casey returns home, Pecos’ first question is always “Daddy, how were those pens set up at those ranches this week?” And then he goes directly to his room to build an identical set up with his toy panels and chutes. He often holds a weekly auction with his cattle and horse toys. Brazos is always the volume buyer.

Pecos accomplished a major rite of passage for a world champion after scoring 86 points and winning a buckle at his first mutton busting at the Stonewall Peach Jamboree Rodeo. Of course after this, mom is thinking about future broken bones and dad is thinking about the National Finals Rodeo! Life as a cowboy would not be complete without a good mount. Santa brought Pecos a miniature horse last year for Christmas. His first response to getting the pony was “Now I can rope momma’s chickens!” At 36 inches tall and a girth nearly double that,widowmaker will not likely win any Top Ranch Horse honors, but she is becoming a legendary kid horse here in Harper.

Brazos arrived on May 25th weighing in at 8 pounds, 3 ounces and 21 inches tall. He has been such a gift and brought so much joy to our family the second half of this year. While Pecos seems to be the most excited about being a big brother, it looks like Widowmaker will have a few more years of hard riding. While we still have plenty of time to learn what Brazos’ interests will be, we do know he ADORES his big brother and just lights up with excitement any time he is near. We can guess he’ll be a constant shadow and companion to Pecos. He really enjoys story time with Pecos and Casey on those nights we are fortunate to have Casey home at bedtime. The beginnings of personality traits and temperament are starting to show and Brazos is every bit as excited and animated as Pecos is calm and collected. So we’ll certainly have our hands full! For now, he is Erin’s main sidekick while Pecos attends pre-school. And although he hasn’t made the trek to Louisiana yet (thanks to reflux!), we hope 2011 will bring him a tummy that travels a bit better and us a few opportunities to visit Erin’s family.

Erin stays involved with the community and church as a professional volunteer. She also manages to keep up with a few work projects of her own, mainly with program development, communications, event planning and a little writing. She enjoys the variety of freelance work, the flexibility, and opportunity to keep in tune with agriculture and events other than play dates and school activities. If that isn’t enough to fill a day’s time, she fits in a wide range of office tasks for Casey. All of this leaves her very little free time but she somehow maintains our blog site for family and friends to keep tabs on the antics of our crazy life! If you are interested, just visit www.theworrellfamily.blogspot.com.

Our business has had the best year ever and we are so thankful to all of our loyal customers. We realize that it is our customers that provide for our family and allows Erin to stay home with the boys. After 12 years as an ultrasound technician, Casey looks forward to every day spent on these ranches. It is amazing how he has built such great relationships all over the country. The people he works with make the travel and time away from home worth it. We never know which direction he is going next, but anxiously await his safe return. Our nightly prayers include a request to keep him safe and healthy.

As we remember this past year, there is a Bible verse that comes to mind: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, on your own intelligence rely not; in all your ways be mindful of him, and he will make straight your paths.” Proverbs 3:5-6

God continues to bless us in ways that are unimaginable. We look forward to seeing what He has in store for us in 2011 and truly hope it includes more time to catch up with so many of our dear friends and family along the way.