Pre-Christmas Family Time

I am having so much fun finally getting to have my parents here interacting with the boys.  I love having them experience the Melder boys first-hand (the chaos, the cuteness, the cunning).  Here's an adorable picture of Gramma and Grampa with Penn on Saturday night before his bedtime.

Today after the 11am church service, we were back at home scrambling through lunch to get to naptimes and Grampa had a sweet moment with Penn watching it all from his exersaucer. So bummed this is out of focus, but you get the idea.

Penn is at such a tactical stage.  He's been using his little hands to touch faces and get to know his grandparents.  It's so special.  They are loving it!

Koen and Gramma enjoyed some bonding time over the blog yesterday afternoon.  Kids do love to see themselves and Koen is proof of that.  He loves to review the pictures and videos on the blog.  I see enough of the blog writing it, so he and I don't really do this together at all, but Gramma is one of the blog's biggest fans, so Koen knows he has a blog buddy in her.  Koen is currently having to earn his "Technology Time."  This means that he receives tickets that allow him computer time or DVD privileges.  And how does he earn these?  Good behavior at bedtime and in the morning while sharing a room with Tav.  Let's just say the tickets have been scarce, but the motivation has been helping his efforts to obey improve.  He had just one ticket yesterday and he chose to use it for time on the blog with Gramma.  We set the timer for 20 minutes and he and Gramma had a blast (as you can see).

Unfortunately I have no pics to prove it, but yesterday was a very special day...Aunt Abbie arrived!  The house is definitely full now, but it really, really feels like Christmas now.  Tavin has been looking forward to Aunt Abbie arriving for "ho ho ho" (what he used to call Christmas, now he says, "tis-mis").  She's finally here, it's really Christmastime!  Stay tuned for more in the coming days.