It’s a Pizza Birthday Party

Making a birthday pizza. Kids from Mountain Avenue Elementary helped their friend Alyssa Lee celebrate her sixth birthday at Hello Pizza on Sunday.

By Mary O’KEEFE

Getting together with old friends and enjoying a meal is always a great way to celebrate a birthday. And when your friends are all kindergartners and you are turning six what better way add to the birthday celebration then to not only eat your favorite type of pizza, but also create it yourself. Along the way you get covered with flour and even get to throw some dough around.

The flour was flying and the giggles filled Hello Pizza in La Cañada on Sunday as Alyssa Lee celebrated her birthday. She had invited several of her classmates from Denise Kimura’s kindergarten class at Mountain Avenue Elementary.

Owner Brandon Tak offers a hands on birthday party for kids that include giving them dough to mold and play with, then throw at his very friendly and forgiving employees in a kind of pizza basketball game.

His employees then dust tables with flour and the kids learn the fine art of making the perfect pizza.

When asked what the best part of the day was, partygoer Heather Pauly said, “Throwing the pizza [dough].”

David Mnatsakanyan, another kindergartener, was having a lot of fun as he molded his pizza dough into a circle and put it on the pan to be baked.

“It’s fun,” David said.

The kids finished their pizza works of art and then got to eat them. All as the parents sat at nearby tables, many of them enjoying their own pizza.