Why I am Geeking-Out about "Angry Birds Star Wars II": Part One

As I sit here on my exercise ball wearing Livvy (who is now 7 weeks old) in a ring sling while drinking a much needed glass of water, I am pausing to reflect on the events of today.  September 19th...my two sons (ages 8 and almost 5) have been counting down to this date for the last several months.  Today, my friends, was the official release date for Angry Birds Star Wars II!  Now this may not strike excitement into the hearts of those who are reading this post, but in this nerdy house, it was a cause for celebration! hahaha; )

Now let me back up a little.  I know Angry Birds is a popular app on nearly every smart phone, but to Stephen (almost 5) it has become a spring board for some incredibly imaginative play and a world all its own.  He, of course, knows how to play the game on the iPad, but honestly that's not where he spends most of his time.  His Uncle Marshall brought home an Angry Birds build-it-yourself game from Hong-Kong about a year or so ago.  At the time, Steve was still a little too young to actually build it himself, but in the last several months he has developed quite a talent for it.  He spends lots of time and energy carefully stacking the blocks that came with it as well as some Dominos and large Lego's to make a "castle" for the pigs.  He then lines up the hard plastic angry birds behind the sling shot and proceeds to knock it down...complete with sound effects: )  This is adorable to watch, by the way.  I love to video him when he's not paying attention to capture the moments...yeah, that's a mom thing...

So anyway, Stephen has also acquired quite a varied collection of stuffed animal Angry Birds.  He has made his own "sling shot" out of an old sit-on-it-and-bounce ball thing that has a handle.  One day he asked me to tie some of my thick hemp string around the as the sling portion and there you go...one sling shot that couldn't actually work if its life depended on it, but that is no match for the imagination of an "almost 5" year old!!  He loads his stuffed Angry Birds in that thing and flies them out himself, then soars them around the room making the "correct" noise for each bird (as per the iPad game).  He named all of these stuffed animals to begin with, but once he found out that there were actual Angry Bird Toons (short films created to tell the story behind why the birds are angry at the pigs) and started watching them, he soon changed their names to match the "real" names from the short films.  He still calls his favorite one (the blue bird from Angry Birds Space) "Chap-chap down"...although the jury is still out on where he came up with that.

Now, back to today.  Kolbe has been jacked out of his mind at the fact that there was going to be an Angry Birds Star Wars II game coming out.  He managed to get Stephen pretty psyched about it too, even thought the Star Wars version of Angry Birds has been his least favorite of the series until now.  Kolbe loves it because it is Star Wars themed...and he is in a Star Wars craze right now.  Stephen just likes it because it's Angry Birds, so I guess it is a beautiful thing in that it brought their two loves together to a common interest. (*grin*)

I know this has been a pretty long back story, but I feel it was necessary to convey the value that Kolbe and Stephen place on this new game and why.  It is an outlet for them when they need a break from all else, and a reasonably educational means of having fun.  For the record, their screen time is limited each day and cannot begin until all school work is complete.  I like the fact that they have a strong interest in *something* so that we can clean out our local library on those topics and get them into some books!  Reading can actually be enjoyable if you are truly interested in the content! And in this age of technology, getting off the screens and into a book can be challenging...and I can understand that.  Why spend the time and effort reading when you can watch a 30 minute show or 2 hour movie with no effort? Well, by golly, I'm here to teach them why! : )

Now Livvy has woken up again, so I'm going to call it a night and take her to bed.  Tomorrow I will actually get to the reason for the title of this post.  It's going to be great! (Or at least I think so; )