On the way home from Vermont on Sunday night we stopped for dinner at The People's Pint in Greenfield, Massachusetts, and started talking about our upcoming trip to Universal Studios and The Wizarding World of Harry Potter. As the kids were daydreaming of all the things they would buy at Hogsmeade Village, I came up with an idea...
Harry Potter fans are familiar with how the Hogswarts professors dole out and take away points to the four houses based on students' behavior. Well, a new point-system has been instituted in our own little castle!
I asked the boys which Hogwarts house they would like to join and they picked Gryffindor (of course) and I have adopted the role of Albus Dumbledore, which means I am in charge or awarding and subtracting points from Gryffindor for the next three months. And the conversion rate is $1 to spend at Hogsmeade for every 50 "Harry Potter Points" earned before the plane takes off for Orlando in February. The previously-unused chalkboard in the kitchen is now being used to keep a running tally of HP points.
For example, going back to The People's Pint dinner, all three boys did an excellent job eating their food, so they each earned 5 points for Gryffindor. On top of that, they all behaved exceptionally well that night, which allowed Amy and I to enjoy chilling out at our favorite brew-pub on the planet. So that gave them 10 more points, and they walked out of dinner with 25 points.
But then, when we arrived home Cameron unceremoniously dumped his coat on a table in the basement and left it there. So I adopted a Snape-like snarl and announced "Five points from Gryffindor!"
Meanwhile, Amy immediately started complaining that I was being too liberal with handing out points. So I placed her in Slytherin's house and dubbed her "Salazar". This evoked several...how shall I say?..."highly critical" statements, including an invitation to kiss her butt. And just like that, Slytherin had negative 60 points within minutes of the point-system being initiated!