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smartest move back there at the school. I'm not exactly the fastest runner, and a half hour isn't that big of a head start. Tuesday Tonight I realized all of my current problems can be traced back to when someone in my family started stealing the lunch snacks. So I decided to catch the thief once and for all. I knew Mom had gone grocery shopping over the weekend, so there was a fresh supply of snacks in the laundry room. That meant the snack thief was pretty much guaranteed to strike. After dinner I went in the laundry room and turned

off the light. Then I climbed in an empty basket and waited. About a half hour later, someone came in the room and turned on the light, so I hid under a towel. But it turns out it was just Mom. I stayed perfectly still while she got clothes out of the dryer. Mom didn't notice me in there, and she dumped the clothes from the dryer right into the bin where I was hiding. Then she walked out of the room, and I waited some

more. I was seriously ready to wait there all night if that's what it took. But the clothes from the dryer were really warm, and I started feeling a little drowsy. And before I knew it, I was asleep. I don't know how many hours I slept, but what I do know is that I woke up to the sound of crinkling cellophane. When I heard the sound of chewing, I turned on my flashlight and caught the thief red-handed. HA!

It was Dad! Man, I should have known it was him from the start. When it comes to junk food, he's a total addict. I started to give Dad a piece of my mind, but he cut me off. He wasn't interested in talking about why he was stealing our lunch snacks. What he was interested in talking about was what the heck I was doing buried in a pile of Mom's underwear in the middle of the night. Right at that moment, we heard Mom coming down the stairs. I think me and Dad realized how bad the situation looked for both of us, so we each just grabbed as many oatmeal creams as we could carry and made a run for it. Wednesday I was still really steamed at Dad for stealing our lunch treats, and I was planning on confronting him tonight. But Dad was in bed by 6:00, so I didn't get my chance.

Dad went to bed so early because he was depressed about something that happened when he got home from work. When Dad was getting the mail, our neighbors from up the street, the Snellas, walked down the hill with their new baby. The baby's name is Seth, and I think he's about two months old. Every time the Snellas have a baby, six months later they throw a big "half-birthday" party and invite all the neighbors. The highlight of each Snella half-birthday party is when the adults line up and try to make the baby laugh. The grown-ups do all these wacky things and make complete fools of themselves.

I've been to every single Snella half-birthday party so far, and no baby has laughed once. Everyone knows the Real reason the Snellas have these half-birthday parties is because their big dream is to win the $10,000 Grand Prize on "America's Funniest Families." That's this TV show where they play home movies of people getting hit in the groin with golf balls and stuff like that. The Snellas are just hoping something really funny will happen at one of their parties so they can catch it on videotape. They've actually gotten some pretty good stuff over the years. During Sam Snella's half-birthday party, Mr. Bittner split his pants doing jumping jacks. And during Scott Snella's party, Mr.