May, 1972

Amy dear, do you remember the day Elizabeth was born? You were only about 2 ½  years old and living in Cedar, Iowa when Elizabeth was born in the hospital in Oscaloosa at about 7:30 in the morning. Grandpa and Grandma Stob arrived at your house late that Friday afternoon to take care of you and your daddy, while your mother was in the hospital with your new baby sister.
    Remember how you and Grandma would get up early and have breakfast together? We had a dish of oatmeal with brown sugar and milk on it, and a boiled egg and toast, and it tasted so good to us. The sun would begin to shine in that nice big kitchen while we would be eating our breakfast and we would talk about what we would do that day.
    One of the things we did was pretend we were marching in a parade, and we would both be playing a horn. They were only make-believe horns, made from the card-board tube from the roll of paper towels, but we could play so many songs as we marched along.
    The parade lasted quite a while, through the kitchen, through the bath room, then the family room, the dining room, the living room, the big hall, then start over. Grandma would finally become tired and her voice would become hoarse, but we did have fun, didn’t we?
    Later, we would go outside, and you would ride your little toy pony around and round the church. He was such a cute little pony, and you really loved him. You also liked the real live pony who was in the pasture in the field behind your house. Remember how you would gather some of the long grass and feed it to him through the fence. And then we would go to see the chickens in the big chicken yard next to the pony’s pasture. It was quite a walk for us, because your daddy’s garden was so big and we had to walk way around it to see the pony and the chickens. Sometimes we would have a glass of Kool-Aide when we came home, because we were tired and thirsty. We would sit under your apple tree near your swing. (Your swing was an automobile tire which was tied to the limb of the apple tree with a big rope. It would be hard to swing sometimes because it would only go twisting around and round. But it was fun.)
    Sometimes the children from school would try swinging when they got off the bus in the church yard. They would call, "Hi, Amy" but you would go in through the garage into the house because you were a bit shy of them.
    Do you remember the big beds of tulips that bordered the cement drive at your garage? And the clumps of beautiful peonies along the side of your yard, and in front of you house, and the red-wood planters and flower boxes on your front porch filled with geraniums and petunias? You had such a nice big front porch where you could play. And you even had a box of sand on the porch to play in, and it didn’t even hurt if you poured sand on the floor, because your mother could easily sweep it up. Remember how you saw a big cat taking a nap in one of your flower boxes?
    One night when we were going to bed we heard a strange noise outside high up in the big tree next to your house, You said, "Don’t be scared Grandma. That is a big owl who comes and sits in our tree every night, and says "Who-oo-oo to us, because we like to have him there."
    Wasn’t it nice living in Iowa? And now we live in Hamilton and we have fun here. We have had turtles, and birds, and lots of fun things to do. We like it here too, and we have lots of nice friends to play with every day.