My (albeit limited) experience with stock options
Considerations:
1) Unless you have a definite tax reduction strategy, or would buy and hold this fund directly (at this price) from your cash, do not buy and hold the stock. (Almost) no point. Instead you can simply exercise in future when you like the sale price to the same benefit.
-- If the stock is somewhat volatile, note that exercising (selling) an option you do not yet own, is generally not a same day / same hour activity, so you will not get the price that you see when you tell your employer to sell. So ability to quickly sell is lost. But if this is the case, then you have a WHOLE lot more risk from volatility about the price going down than if you decide to hold them.
-- Note that some rules limit WHEN your wife (an employee) can sell. This may hold true for personally owned stock as well as options.
2) Good idea -- Exercise these when your income is planned to be low to gain tax advantages (lower tax marginal rate)
3)NOTE - Potential reason to buy and hold is taxation treatment...
When you buy or gain control, you owe the taxes this year (income tax, not capital gains, usually for incentive options) between the strike price and the current price, even if you do not sell. (At least here you do, I was caught on this once). So you need cash on hand or to sell a portion of them anyway to pay the taxes. The amount they gain after you buy them is taxed as capital gains when you sell.
4) Do these have an incredible cash dividend that you would like now? If so, and you would buy the stock at this price and hold it, then ok.
My limited experience is that options are either underwater later when you think you will exercise or sell them, or hit you with surprising taxes if you try to just buy and hold. I have never actually made money, net, doing anything other than buy and sell immediately, so if you are in the money, I say exercise them now.