McKayla Turns Eight!

It was a SpongeBob SquarePants party!




Of course, everyone had to wear their SB hat. (McKayla was nice enough to label each hat with our name, so we knew where to sit.)

Brian's hat string broke during lunch, so we were calling him "Big Head" Brian from there on out.

Ha-ha! :-)

(Gotta have pretty thick skin in our family!)


Speaking of Brian, here he is with the toothless birthday girl.
Or "Mono Loco" as he likes to call her.


I'm sure it's no surprise that McKayla had a SpongeBob cake. But it wasn't just any cake. It was a yummy ice cream cake from Baskin Robbins. Before we inhaled the cake, though, we had to sing to the birthday girl.


Aren't these plastic cake toppers--Patrick, SpongeBob, and Mr. Krabs--just adorable?!


Next, it was time to open gifts. McKayla's big gift this year was a Wii video game system!


And of course, McKayla and Pop had to test it out.
You know, to make sure it was working okay.
Here they are jousting! If my memory serves me correctly, Pop lost this round and fell off the platform into the sea. (As a spectator, my favorite part is watching the defeated player fly over the edge and tumble down into the water. I have a twisted sense of humor.)


McKayla also received this cool Password Journal from her Aunt Katie.


This password journal is pretty cool; it's like a hi-tech dairy. You don't use a key to open it. Instead, you select a secret word or phrase. The journal will only open when you utter that word or phrase. In fact, not only does it have voice recognition and password protection, but it also has an intruder alert. We never heard it go off, though, despite Brian's many attempts to open it. (See below for the story on that.)

Anyway, to set her password initially, McKayla ran down the hall to her bedroom, said the word quietly and then returned to the living room with her journal closed.

(We suspected that she might have used the default password, but we weren't positive.)

Each time McKayla wanted to open her journal and show us her writing, though, she had to do the same thing--run down the hall and into her room--for fear of revealing her secret password.

Come to think of it, maybe a key (like we had in the old days!) would have been easier...

And as if voice recognition and password protection weren't cool enough, each journal page appears blank until the user turns on the glow light and uses the magic pen.

Snazzy, huh?!

I think I want one for my birthday...LOL

Later on, McKayla set her journal down on the couch for a second, and Uncle Brian just couldn't resist picking it up. In typical Uncle Brian fashion, he tried repeatedly to gain access to McKayla's journal by guessing the password.

It went something like this:

Brian's first attempt: "UncleBrianisawesome!"

Brian's second attempt: "IloveUncleBrian!"

Brian's third attempt: "IwishIwasascoolasUncleBrian!"

Brian's funny and clever password attempts had us in stitches, and seeing McKayla's reactions was priceless!

Although Uncle Brian gave it his best shot, he never figured out McKayla's true password.

And chances are, she'll never tell! :-)