Who stole the cookies from the cookie jar?

Growing up in a family of 5 kids we were very close.  I don't just mean close like we got a long but that my parents had 5 kids in 7 years close.  With that we did a lot together and got in to a lot of mischief together.  Looking back now we have some great stories to tell.  After each story the phrase is uttered "man, we were weird kids."

One story we like to talk about was what I like to call "2 minutes in Heaven" although it was most likely to have been 30 seconds but to a 5 yr. old it could have very well felt like eternity.

Growing up, like any good LDS family we had our abundance of food storage stocked nicely in the basement storage room.  Each in its own category.  Grains, canned good, bottled fruits done the previous summer, meats, toiletries and household items.  Then there were shelves of the good stuff.  Packs of Jell-O, pudding, marshmallows, chocolate chips, spam (only the kind with the key on it for opening), and the life time supply of Jelly Bellies that the folks had won during their time on Family Feud.

Here's where it gets good.  (Might have the kids leave the room while you read this)  So the game goes like this.  All the kids stand outside the storage room while one person goes inside and shuts the door behind them.  You are given 30 seconds to eat as much food as you can in that amount of time before someone on the other side opens the door and yells "times up!"  My goal was to be the first one in to get the can of spam.  Not because I like spam it was because I liked opening the can with the fancy little key.  Then I just left the partialy opened can on the shelf.  Then we would tear in to marshmallows and chocolate chips.  We would open red cherry Jell-O packets and dip our fingers in licking them like lick-o-sticks.  Try to hide that evidence of red stained finger tips from the parents for the next 4 days!  All that delicous food to us was heaven!  Best game EVER.

It wasn't until about 4 years ago when we were telling this story again and my mom chimes in and says "WHAT?  You kids did that?  And this entire time we thought we had mice."  Well that made sense to us.  Avoiding the mouse traps added a new element of surprise and excitement to our game.

Bwzingzwrtzyaprza and flash forward to the past two weeks here.  I've notice a few empty chips sacks in the pantry.  Ritz packages left open and empty granola boxes left on the shelf.  Hmmm?  Who's been leaving trash in here?  Is it from the kids' lunch boxes?  Has Cordell been snacking before dinner and hasn't closed the packages?  Weird.  Then I walk in the kitchen after taking a shower where the boys were supposed to be watching a movie and I hear this noise in the pantry.  Ah HA!  I've found my little mouse! 

He's beat me at my own game!