Mommy's In Charge...the New Melder Weekend View

Not to be dramatic or anything, but things around here are changing.  It's exciting, but a little overwhelming too.  The church campus that Doug leads is adding a Saturday night service.  We are so excited about the growth that made this need pop up and all that the Lord provided to make it happen, but it does mean another evening we can plan on Doug out and me here with the boys on my own.  Thankfully it's just the late afternoon/evening time that Doug has to be gone on most Saturdays, but it definitely affects the look of our weekends.  In a few weeks Doug also starts a Lecture Series in Oakland and he will be out a bunch of Friday nights.  All in all, it's a busy Fall, but busy means a lot of great things happening in ministry and thankfully I have a husband who is so dedicated to his kids and puts them as his first priority in ministry and continues to carve out as much time as possible to be with his boys.  That being said, prepare yourself for a lot of blog posts of me and the boys charging through the weekend evenings on our own.  I look forward to adventures, simple moments and hopefully lots of grace and strength!  As for this first weekend with the Saturday night service at North Way Oakland, things went quite well.  Doug didn't have to leave until about 3:30pm.  After the boys were done with naps and rest times we headed out on a wagon/scooter walk.

Koen loves pulling Penn in the wagon (and it is more than a little nerve-racking as he doesn't understand that Penn's giggles do not necessarily indicate that what he is doing is safe).  But here's a picture of Penn cracking up due to Koen's hilarious surprise turn-around "are we going fast enough?" quizzes.

After dinner was cleaned up things got very dark.  We checked the radar and yes indeed a thunderstorm was headed our way (yes, the boys LOVE the radar map).  We parked ourselves on the front room couch and watched the rain and lightning and listened to the thunder.  This is the stuff memories are made of.

All in all, we got through Saturday evening well and then Sunday came.  Oh, wow.  Intense.  Koen woke up on the wrong side of the bed again.  Well, we'll just call it that.  He's had a cough all week and he's in a phase where he doesn't like to show his weakness and tell us if he's not feeling good (he's always "fine").  So, I think he hasn't been feeling that great much of this week.  Anyways, he's been an emotional, moody, behavioral. mess.  Today was no different from the get go.  We got out the door just in the nick of time for the 9am service at church.  Penn had his first full service in nursery and did great.  That was super exciting for me to see him do fine without me in there.  Usually he takes his morning nap at church in his car seat, but since we've been dropping the morning nap I had him go play this AM.  He must have loved it because he only got saved for about 5 minutes when he noticed I wasn't there and then he was fine.  Super excited to play with new toys in a new place.  Unfortunately his older brothers didn't have such a positive time in Kidz Church.  Koen totally had Tav all worked up and they were so uncontrollable that when Doug walked through their area before being needed upstairs he had to take them out of Kidz Church and have serious chats separately with both of them.  Thankfully Pastor Daddy did the trick and everything was OK after that.  After church we had fun plans to go to brunch at a friend's house.  It was a reunion of sorts with the bulk of an old small group we were a part of years ago.  It's always fun to get together with these folks although we all have a lot more kids than we did then, so it's a little more hectic than it used to be.  Here are a few shots.  There are 9 kids total (4 couples), but not all are in the photos.  Yeah, that's right.  9 kids!

Penn just has to be involved these days.  Here he is crawling around on the patio just getting busy with whatever so he can be a part of what his bros are doing.

Please, oh please make sure you notice Penn in this picture peeking at the big boys from the far side of the table.  And yes, Tav's just tearing into the muffin.

Some of the little guys.

Right before we left, Penn found a tunnel.  At first he wasn't sure...

But then after about 6 times back and forth through it, it was tough to catch a pic he was going so fast and giggling and squealing all the while.  

I have to say a big THANKS to Nicole for hosting the brunch today.  Brave woman to host all these little ones in her home (and her hubby wasn't even home!).  We had a great time catching up with everyone and letting the kids play.  I always love something fun to do while Doug is working a long day and this was a favorite Sunday situation for sure.  Well, that's about all that is worth blogging about for today.  After brunch the little guys went down for their naps.  Koen had a relaxing afternoon and after the little guys got up we headed outside (again it was in the 80's!).  We had some fun with neighbors and then had dinner and then ran through the bedtime routines.  Phew.  Goodnight!