It's here!

At long last, our wait is over! The newest Harry Potter book is here. (As if you didn't know!) We celebrated in fine style at some friends' home last night. What a great party! For book Five, we went to Barnes and Noble, because we lived near Fresno and it was either that or Borders. No choice to visit a cool indie bookstore--that was it for choices. And BN was a mob scene. They handled it as best they could, but that was just how it was.

So, last night we gathered with friends and had a great time. The kids played a house elf game, where socks were scattered all over the floor and the kids on either side of a rope had to "clean up" by throwing all the socks on their side to the other side. It didn't get very clean! And they wrote "howlers" and then read them, loudly, about how excited they are about the new book. There was quite the spread of Hogwarts' inspired food. Ginger Newts, Butterbeer, Yorkshire Pudding, Pumpkin Pasties, Snape's Brains (rice crispy treats), and more.

Costumes....we almost had to not go in costume, because some of us were getting obsessed to the point of tears....but in the end we were all able to handle it. Hibi went as Fred and George, Zac was Zacharias Smith, Paul wore his priest's cassock and was a random villager, and I went as Prof. Trelawney. At the party, there was a Harry Potter, a Hermione, a Prof. McGonagall, a Voldemort, and we dubbed one little one who kept running screaming through the room "Peeves." :-)

The wonderful thing about this party is that, at midnight, we didn't all have to make a mad dash for a bookstore. The bookstore came to us! That's right--the local neighborhood bookstore made deliveries of the Half-Blood Prince at midnight. We were very skeptical that they'd actually get there anytime around midnight....but they were there at five minutes 'til! The two women entered with a box, to great applause from children and adults alike! It was so exciting! Then we did a countdown to midnight, at which time, the box was cut open and the books handed out. We then ate cake and I read the first five pages to the eager children while they ate. Then it was home for us, as some members of our family were fading fast.

Now we are in the throws of reading, reading, reading. Hibi read book Five by five pm on the day it came out. But then, we were blessed with three copies, as we picked up copies for friends. The system worked like this: one copy for Hibi, one for the adult who was reading to Zac, and one for the other adult to read to him/herself. This time we only have one, and it's going to be a challenge. Hibi gets the book whenever we're not reading aloud to the rest of us. We can only read out loud for so long, so perhaps it'll work out afterall.