As the Universal Studios trip draws near, here is the latest tally:
Hufflepuff (Cameron): 430
Gryffindor (Owen): 280
Little Hufflepuff (Shane): 135
Those friggin' first-borns!
Anyway, it looks like the Keenan boys will be living it up in Hogsmeade Village shortly. They are all planning to drink their fill of pumpkin juice and "butterbeer"!
The Headmaster recently decided that it was time to overhaul the format of our Harry Potter point system.
The original thought was that if the boys were on one team then they would all pull together for the collective good.
Well, the problem is that Cameron has been highly motivated to rack up the points before we take off for Universal Studios; much more so than his two little teammates. In fact, he has instituted an ambitious 50-points-per-day quota for Gryffindor. Meanwhile, Owen and Shane have been cruising along and riding Cam's coat tails to an extraordinary point accumulation.
So...we now have a new format! You guessed it; they are each a team of one. The 1,610 points that they have rung up so far will be doled out equally when we arrive at Hogsmeade in February, but from now until then we'll be tallying up points on an individual basis.
Cameron (who is downright ecstatic about the new format) has announced that he is moving to Hufflepuff. He's been campaigning for this move since the point system was established.
Shane (who is deeply distressed about the new format) has announced that his new house is "Little Hufflepuff". He seems to think that this new house name will, on some level, keep him connected to Cameron somehow.
Meanwhile, Owen (who seems entirely unphased by the new format) has decided to simply stay in Griffindor as its sole remaining member.
So, we'll see how this goes. Something tells me that Cameron is going to end up having quite a field day at Honeyduke's!
Owen had set a goal of finishing Harry Potter & The Prisoner of Azkaban before the end of the year, and he did so yesterday with plenty of room to spare! Owen and I finished the book off with a lengthy 60-page reading session yesterday afternoon, thereby bagging 50 points for Gryffindor.
In keeping with family tradition, that meant it was "Harry Potter Party" time! After Cameron's indoor soccer game, Amy picked up some calzones and meatball grinders at Olympic Pizza. Then we set up shop in the living room, kicked back and spent the rest of the evening watching the movie of the book we had just polished off.
And...just when we thought things couldn't get any better...Amy followed up the now-famous "Candy Cane Cookie Debacle" with a special Christmas toffee, which she served up near the end of the movie. In stark contrast to the cookies, the boys and I submitted glowing reviews for the toffee!
Owen enjoyed the movie immensely since it followed the book very closely. He also appreciated the scenes from "Hogsmeade", the wizard village, since we'll be strolling through Universal Studio's version of Hogsmeade in a couple of short months!
Now it's on to my favorite installment in the Harry Potter series: Harry Potter & The Goblet of Fire. And, of course, Owen has set a goal for this book as well; finish it off before our plane takes off for Orlando!
Owen has thrown down the gauntlet. Or maybe I should say that he's thrown down the Goblet of Fire?
Owen has issued a Harry Potter-oriented challenge to himself (and me, I suppose) for the month of December. He has vowed that we will finish reading Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban before the end of the year!
I'm not sure what exactly inspired the challenge, but it actually prompted a nice dinner-time discussion about goal setting. I tried to explain that it's really important to always have goals to work towards.
However, I told the boys that a goal can't be too easy. For example, I argued that the goal of "I'm going to breathe today" isn't going to light a fire under anyone.
At the same time, a goal shouldn't be impossible either. I offered the example of setting a goal of growing ten feet by the end of the day since you wouldn't even bother attempting something that's impossible (although Cameron took umbrage at this since it flies in the face of his "nothing is impossible" mantra).
Instead, you need a goal that makes you "stretch". Something that would be really challenging, but not impossible. Like a goal of reading the remaining 160 pages of Harry Potter within the next 28 days!
We would have to average nearly six pages every day. Yes, we know that Aunt Laura could probably cover the 160 pages in half an hour, but we don't read quite as fast (plenty of 50-cent words to define, which requires frequent breaks) and it seems impossible to get more than 15 minutes of uninterrupted reading time these days. So it's gonna be a stretch.
But Dumbledore has sweetened the deal by offering up 50 points for Gryffindor if Owen can pull it off! We'll see!
The Gryffindor boys are doing a bang-up job with accumulating their HP points for our trip to Universal Studios in February. Professor Snape would be absolutely beside himself if he were here!
To say that Cameron is doing the lion's share (no pun intended) of the work would be the understatement of the year. He's been busier than a house-elf...raking leaves, cleaning the table and vacuuming the floor after dinner, massages for Mom & Dad, unprompted basement cleaning projects, eating dinner like a champ, trying brussel sprouts (eek, that didn't go very well)...you name it!
Meanwhile, Owen & Shane are mostly underachieving so far. Not only that, but they've cost Gryffindor a bunch of points. Shane had a bed-wetting incident and has occassionally acted like an unmitigated brat. Owen has woken up the entire household at an unGodly hour a couple of times and he has come home more than once with a barely-touched lunch. Each of these events has triggered ten-point deductions. Sigh...
Cameron has, understandably, been demanding permission to jump ship and switch to Hufflepuff (with the understanding that his little brothers would stay in Gryffindor). But the Headmaster has declined these repeated requests in the hopes that Owen & Shane's behavior will be better if they know that a team is counting on them.
Anyway, as it stands now Gryffindor is holding steady at 385 points. Hey, that's not too bad (despite Owen & Shane's best efforts) with less than three months to go!
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!
It took us a few years, but I'm finally done reading the 4,100-page Harry Potter series to Cameron!
What's kinda funny is that when we started Book #1 (Harry Potter & The Sorcerer's Stone...remember that one?) Cameron couldn't read, so I had to read it to him. However, by the time we reached Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows, Cameron was fully capable of reading the book on his own. But I told him he was forbidden from doing so since I was dying to see how the series ended!
Overall, we both thought that the whole series was a winner! Cam is now something of a bookworm and it's quite possible that our 3 year-long Harry Potter reading marathon may have been the biggest thing that triggered his love of reading. So it was a bit exhausting at times, but definitely worth it.
And one other big benefit for me is that I've developed a half-decent British accent!
There aren't a lot of drive-in theaters around like there used to be, but Amy found a beauty in Mansfield, CT which was having a special "Harry Potter Night" last night where you could shove as many bodies into the car as you can and pay only $18! What a deal!
Cameron and I finished Harry Potter & The Half-Blood Prince (book 6 of the 7-book series) quite a while ago, and we usually celebrate finishing the book by watching the movie on DVD in the basement with bottomless containers of microwave popcorn. But this time we managed to get ahead of the series and polished off the book well before the movie even hit the theaters! So last night was a different spin on our usual celebration.
We're giving the movie mixed reviews after nothing but raves for the previous five Harry Potter movies. It was relatively well done, but the boys shared the strong opinion that there was much, much too much teenage lovey-dovey stuff going on. The boys will fully appreciate that someday, but not quite yet. Also, the movie lacked that big, climactic battle at the end which was found in all of the previous films.
Ah well! It was still a drive-in movie and we had tons of fun.
Having said all that, I regret to announce that I am hereby boycotting all future drive-in movie trips since I ended up going to bed at 1am. I could handle that when I was a kid, but not anymore. Especially on a Wednesday night!
It took us a while to finish the 870-page behemoth, but we finally shelved Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix a couple days ago and then had our first "Harry Potter Party" (highlighted by playing the movie of the book we just finished while munching on popcorn) away from home, at the log cabin in Madison, NH.
Cam and I both agreed that this was the best HP book yet, as well as the scariest HP movie yet. We've already started Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Book #6 in the series) and we're confident that we can finish it before the November 21st release date of the movie. Heck, it's only 650 pages long!
