Last year Madoc and MacQuaid were 100% Star Wars. This year we are saturated in Lord of the Rings. We read the Hobbit together and then watched the 1977 Hobbit cartoon. We're currently 50 hours into reading the LOTR trilogy. Once we reach a point in the book where a movie ends, we watch it, and the corresponding part of the LOTR cartoon. It's entertaining seeing all the differences. For instance we prefer the Arwen rescue from the movie as compared to Legolas in the cartoon, or Glorfindel in the book. For the most part though we all agree on the supremacy of the original work.
This Christmas (2010) they were fortunate enough to receive a custom Hobbit: There and Back Again Lego set from "Santa". If I had to "guess", I would say this is around 140 Ebay purchases as well as a couple complete Lego castle sets and countless hours. There's no way anything but a magical being and his trusty elves could have pulled this one off. The set includes most of events in The Hobbit. The troll encounter (depicted here), spiders, goblin town, gollum, The hidden tunnel into Smaug's lair, and of course Smaug's Lair.
Characters included are the thirteen dwarves, and Bilbo (pictured), Gandalf, Bard, Smaug, and the three trolls.
Here's the complete Flickr Photo Set.
P.S. I heard a joke recently ... how is Santa like your boss? You do all the work and some fat guy in a suit gets all the credit.
