A walk down memory lane or to be more accurate...small children with a deathwish

With my parent's 50th anniversary party fast approaching we are taking care of last minute details and eagerly anticipating everyone's arrival. My sister and her family are driving out this weekend and my brother and his family will be here in a week. We have created a scrapbook(well, I should say scrapbooks since there are FIVE books in total) for our parents which chronicles their lives from childhood to the present. What a trip it has been to work on these books. As my sisters and I scrapped we did lots of talking and reminiscing. While scrapping some pictures of ourselves as small children the topic of crazy things we used to do came up. The list is longer than I thought. Here are just a few...

• zipped each other into a suitcase (remember the old fashioned kind with a cloth top that zipped open) and then pushed the suitcase down a flight of stairs...this was a special favorite of mine
• climbed up the hayloft chute in the barn all the way to the cupola at the top- it had to be climbed by bracing our arms and legs against the sides and scooching up, bad news if you slipped
• climbed up into the second floor of the barn by scruching in and up through the little hay feeders for the horses, because the stairs would have been just too easy
• jumped from the roof of our neighbors garage to the roof of the bus garage and playing on top of the bus roof...at night
• a favorite game was sandwich...we'd sandwich someone between the mattress and box spring and then jump on the bed
• another bedtime favorite, climbing up on the headboard and falling, Lipton tea style, back onto the bed
• climbing out my sister's window onto the flat roof of the wrap around porch and both running around up there or later on sunning ourselves
• mixing up concoctions of bbq sauce, mustard, milk, jelly, ketchup, koolaid and whatever was on hand in the fridge and feeding it to one another
• speaking of eating things, we loved to sneak into the bathroom cabinet and eat my Mom's appetite suppressant caramel squares
• and speaking of bathroom cabinets Terry and I used to go into the upstairs bathroom linen closet and climb to the highest shelf for no purpose other than to perch there
• crawling both under the barn and under the front porch were always good for a laugh...under the barn was really cool b/c if you crawled all the way to the back there was a hole and if you reached through the hole someone in the pig sty could grab your hand
• jumping out of the big door on the second floor of the carriage house was both thrilling and scary
• downstairs in our basement there was a hole in the rock wall foundation with a big sandy cave, perfect for playing orphanage
• licking our pointer finger and then poking it into the uncovered light switch plate at the bottom of the stairs to get a jolt

I guess all things considered we are pretty lucky to have made it to adulthood physically intact. I say physically because after remembering all these childhood pastimes I realize we are completely and utterly insane.