How to Throw an Angry Birds Party

We had an Angry Birds Birthday party yesterday for our nine-year-old son.  It was terrific.  He called it “the best birthday ever.” 

If your kids love Angry Birds and you want to throw an easy Angry Birds party, I totally recommend this.  I bought two games, Angry Birds Knock on Wood and an Angry Birds card game.  The kids were very happy with both. 

I also made a homemade Angry Birds game.  I bought Melissa and Doug cardboard building blocks, an exercise resistance band (the flat kind without handles), two plush pigs, and three little Angry Birds balls.  We built towers with the cardboard blocks and knocked them down by using the little balls in our exercise band/launcher.  

One of the party’s highlights was the Angry Birds pizza.  It was also the most challenging part of the party for me.  I love pizza.  I miss pizza.  I can’t really handle being around it.  To make matters worse, it was 12:30 in the afternoon when we served pizza, and I hadn’t had a thing to eat all morning because I’d been so busy cleaning the house and preparing for the party.

Once the kids were all seated and eating, I did a wise thing.  Instead of going for the pizza, I took two big spoonfuls of almond butter and mixed them into a little bit of yogurt.  It’s definitely not the most delicious thing, but it is filling.  After I ate it I was so full I forgot all about the pizza craving.  As for the cake, I’ve always believed that I am entitled to a taste of any of my children’s birthday cakes.  This birthday, however, I wasn’t even tempted. 

As I cleaned up after the party, I thought about the fact that I hadn’t tasted the birthday cake.  It felt like I was breaking some kind of ritual – like not tasting the apples and honey on Rosh Hashana.  So I took a little, tiny crumb.  It wasn’t enough to taste anything.  So I took a quarter of a bite.  It was so sweet, I couldn’t believe it.  In the old days, there was no such thing as too sweet for me.  So I guess I’ve done it… I’ve overcome my love of sugar.  Then came time to clean up the pizza.  It was close to 5:00 pm and I was hungry again.  I broke down and ate a little, tiny piece of pizza.  It was cold and the sauce had too much oregano.  But it was good.  It was exactly what I needed.  I ordered my beta cells to wake up and secrete some insulin.  As usual, they were so disobedient!  

*Cake by Ugata

*Pizza by Giant Pizza

Jessica Apple

Jessica Apple grew up in Houston. She studied Bible and Ancient Near Eastern Studies at the University of Michigan, and completed an MA in the same field at the Hebrew University. She began to write and publish short stories while a student, and has continued to write essays and fiction while raising her three sons (and many pets).

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Jessica Apple

Jessica Apple grew up in Houston. She studied Bible and Ancient Near Eastern Studies at the University of Michigan, and completed an MA in the same field at the Hebrew University. She began to write and publish short stories while a student, and continues to write essays and fiction while raising her three sons (and many pets). Jessica’s work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Financial Times Magazine, The Southern Review, The Bellevue Literary Review, Tablet Magazine, and elsewhere. She is the diabetes correspondent for The Faster Times. In 2009 she and her husband, both type 1 diabetics, founded A Sweet Life, where she serves as editor-in-chief. Jessica loves spending time with her sons, cooking with her husband, playing with her cats, reading, biking, drinking coffee, and whenever possible, taking a nap. Follow Jessica on Twitter (@jessapple)