One in a Minion

There's a theme in our house recently and that theme is avocados. Wait, no. That's wrong. Avocados are the new food obsession in our house (I think we've eaten one between us every day for the past week.) The prevailing theme is MINIONS. Yes. Those loud, crazy mini banana men from Despicable Me. J-Bear has requested a Minion themed 5th birthday (I'm hoping she's forgotten that she also requested a surprise party...) With all the minion prep going on in Casa de Smith it's no surprise that when it came time for preschool valentines, my little one loudly proclaimed. MINIONS! 


I may have won a convenient naptime for the cube construction but I had no such luck for rock painting. I'd hoped to distract him with something else, anything else. What I'd forgotten was that BabyBear has entered a "Everything my sister has/is doing/is looking at is amazing and I must copy her exactly or the entire world will end" phase. Same fork, same bowl, same cup.... you get the idea. Add in some paint (which is a well known form of baby crack) and there was no way I was redirecting him.

This would have made a lot more sense if we'd started this activity BEFORE their shower rather than directly after. That's the problem with impluse control. I had no intention to paint rocks, make minions or anything else of that ilk. Then G found our rocks, I asked J about Valentines and a mess was born. I mean an idea.

Who doesn't love oodles of yellow paint an almost 5 year old and a toddler? 

 Turns out the answer is.... 

The almost 5 year old!

After about a kajillion coats of paint. They were finally ready to be Minionized. Super glad we didn't start this project the night before the Valentine's party. Whoo! Win! 

J got down to work writing her name on 30 store bought Minion cards. (Hurrah for something she's interested in actually being current pop culture.) Do you have any idea how long it takes for a 4 year old to write her name on 30 valentine's cards. Yeah. Long. She got to help me glue some eyes on but little girls have bedtimes and this particular one has a tendency to lean towards grumpy in the morning. She couldn't possibly have gotten that trait from me. What are you implying? Alas we didn't start THAT far in advance, we've been painting things yellow for a few days now and the party is tomorrow so I finished up after she was asleep. Yes. I'm probably going to be that mom who you have to tie her hands behind her back to keep her from "helping." I promise I'm getting help. I'm thinking about getting help. ;) I even let her mix her playdoh colors these days, aren't you impressed?

I'm hoping she has fun passing out her Minion Army tomorrow.

ASSEMBLE THE MINIONS!