Howe Home: 2020

2020 A BIG year for world events with the COVID-19 pandemic beginning for us on March 12th when Isaac and I were at his karate class and the vibe was super weird and then suddenly Hannah called me from BYU-I saying they were shutting the school down and we suddenly realized we needed to get her home before things got any crazier. But before things took a wacky turn that year, Rose had her 15th birthday and must have been going vegan because I have a lot of pictures of healthy looking foods from this time period.

This is from her birthday where we all ate cake and she had this mixture of strawberries and something?

But she still had something she enjoyed as this was the year she got her special clock that she loves to this day.

Barbara and Ron came to visit and here we all are going to Bruester's for ice cream with the Potter clan. I believe Barbara and Ron were in town for Ida's baptism. This picture was taken March 14th so things were starting to shut down but we still got some ice cream in at the last minute. Priorities.

The pandemic seriously shut down so many things, including church, that would affect us for a long time. We had been hearing since the end of 2019 about some virus that was causing concern, but that happens A LOT, so it was hard to know that this time it was going to be different.

Everyone was afraid of everyone else, schools shut down, stores emptied out (this picture was taken at our Target on March 12th),

comment wars raged on social media (for instance if you wore a mask, you were a puppet of the state and letting evil people control you but if you didn't wear a mask, you were evil personified)...it was not good times in many aspects. But it did give us time to be together as a family a lot more. Our calendars basically emptied. Around the 2-week mark of the quarantine, Rose, Isaac, and I hiked Rainbow Mountain for the first time and nearly got lost. I also remember being particularly moved by the song "It Is Well With My Soul" that was played at the General Conference we had shortly after this whole COVID mess began. We were all in need of some heart-healing and it was perfect.

Then there was the added stress of Spencer being in a foreign country and us not being able to control when or how he would return. Thankfully this all happened within a month or so of when Spencer was going to be returning from his mission anyway but what a weird way to end your mission. Here is Spencer finally returning from his mission to Peru with all the rest of the missionaries serving there due to the pandemic. Not too many missionaries can say they returned from their missions like this.

Now you can see the masks we were all starting to have to wear...which went on way too long. But we were super thankful to get this kid back safely and hear all about his experiences in Peru! He even had to give his "returning home" talk over Zoom because we could not attend church normally.

Handsome brothers.

With all the free time on my hands from having an empty calendar, I made these posterboard Easter "eggs" to put up in the garage windows that I thought the grandkids might like to see.

One of the many official notices we would get during the pandemic.

Apparently I commemorated these trying times with a giant cookie. The big rule became to stay 6 feet away from everyone else, so much so that even stores would put stickers on their floors marking where to stand in line and there were even directional arrows showing you which way you had to go down their aisles. You can still see remnants of these stickers and signs in places today (2026).

One thing the pandemic took away from us was the chance to see the world famous Kpop group BTS in concert on May 9th of that year. I seriously broke out into a sweat trying to order those tickets off the internet it was so popular and I didn't think I was going to pull it off but then I did. I was very proud of myself. Me, Rose, Hannah, Rachel, and a girl named Saara Sandstrom were all set to go do this, we even had a hotel in Dallas reserved for that night...and then it just didn't matter. I think it was a couple years before they finally refunded us the money for these tickets which was a good thing because they were over $200 a piece.

But it was much better having Spencer home safe and sound. Here he is starting work building the FBI complex on Redstone Arsenal.

And here he is a couple months later.

Also I am throwing these in here because I am sure my friend Linda Warren made these quilts even though I can't remember for who--perhaps some of my grandkids, not sure. She is amazing and I will never tire of looking at her creations!

We went to the botanical gardens multiple times in 2020 since it was still an allowed place being outdoors and all. This time Spencer posed for several statue replicas with some help from the younger ones.

My parents celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary this year and all of us siblings got to spend the day with them reminiscing about how they met (I have it on video) despite the quarantine--it was awesome. While I would have preferred the chance to make a huge deal out of this anniversary, it was pretty perfect to get to spend it like we did.

Stake YW Camp had to go virtual and I put all my heart into making sure we still have a great experience...and my dozen or so YCLs were just AMAZING...even if I nearly lost my mind.

We delivered these boxes to all the girls so they could participate in the many online events we had like decorating puppet socks, learning about the Restoration Proclamation, going on a virtual tour of the Sacred Grove, learning the sign language for the song "My Own Sacred Grove", etc.

I remember telling the girls with the use of this picture of these purple flowers that sometimes things look so different but in the end they are really the same. From a distance I thought these flowers were polka-dotted and was so delighted to share with them that science must have advanced to the point we could have polka-dot flowers now, but when I went to find the pictures, all I found were these regular looking ones. I realized it was really an optical illusion and once you are close enough, they are actually the same as regular flowers--and so was our Stake YW Camp! It looked so different but still brought the Spirit into our lives to help strengthen our testimonies of our Savior Jesus Christ. That virtual camp will remain one of my favorite memories of my time serving the youth.

The icing on the cake was that Sister Becky Craven who was a counselor in the General YW Presidency at the time agreed to speak at our Saturday closing event over Zoom and even attended our YCL meeting the night before where our girls were just as fun and crazy as ever-- and she was delightful! I treasure everything I learned from this powerful disciple of Christ. Sometimes pandemics make miracles possible. Another miracle was that the morning of this closing event the internet went out for almost our entire neighborhood EXCEPT for our portion of our street that had never been hooked up to AT&T and due to that we were able to carry on with our plans since everything depending on my connection.

We then took advantage of COVID social distancing and figured it would be a great time to go to the beach-- which it was. We found a house to rent off VRBO and spent a very fun week down there. Only Junior's family was able to go with us for reasons you will see shortly. We played lots of games during the day (like our family favorite of Scum) to avoid sunburns.

These three were often together.

Junior celebrated his 27th birthday while we were there.

Isaac loved being on the ocean but not so much the jellyfish.

There were beautiful sunsets...

and insanely large birds. This one scared me and Junior early one morning as we were enjoying the quiet and calm and then this bird the size of person walked over and circled right around us without any fear.

The house we rented was name Pelican Perch and the address was 921 Ariola Dr, Pensacola Beach, FL 32561. You only had to walk across the street from the house to access a boardwalk right to the beach which was awesome.

We used this giant float to stay above the jellyfish as much as we could.

Then the day we headed for home Nick and Shay welcomed their third child, and our fourth grandchild, into the world--Owen Jesse Howe! He was born on August 7th while we were driving home from Florida. Normally I would not have wanted to miss such an event but thanks to COVID we couldn't even see him until a couple days later and even then just through the glass of their sliding glass door at their apartment. Crazy times. It makes it really easy to remember when Owen was born though.

The day we got home from Florida, we headed straight up to Clarksville, TN to attend a reception for Isley and Jared Young who got married during these continued crazy times. The Young's are our closest friends from our times in the Army and we love that they are still nearby and we get to see them still sometimes (even more so now that Isley and Jared moved down here to Alabama).

Rozanne Bass was able come over from South Carolina as well so we had a fun reunion--us three ladies all served in Primary in Clarksville at the same time.

And then we went on another vacation in the fall--this time to Gatlinburg, TN and we played some Hillbilly mini-golf, went to the epic Christmas store in Pigeon Forge, and did another escape room--not our favorite one, but we still won.

I forgot to mention that we did church virtually for probably about 5 months and then in August we wanted to go take Spencer to see my parents and sisters in person since they had not been able to do so since he returned from his mission in the spring. So he and I went down there and we got to go to an outdoor ward activity at their Bishop Von Memory's house (which is sort of like a little farm)...

and then to in-person church for the first time in what felt like ages (and the bonus was it was on my birthday).

We still had to do the social distancing, 6 ft apart rule, as you can see here.

I finally got to hold sweet Owen!

And grandpa did too but this pic was taken a few months later.

Also I forgot to mention that when school shut down in spring of this year as the pandemic got into full swing, Isaac had to do a lot of school at home, as did Rose, and it really changed the rest of their education for good. This is some of my prep for the 2020-2021 school year for Isaac.

Fall means visits to family farms with pig races and corn bins. I think this was Lyons Farms but not 100% sure on that one.

Spencer is looking a little intensely at Nick here and it made me laugh.

Can you tell it was hot? Despite the heat, the kids had a blast and it was so fun to get to do this with the Potters as well.

Then we moved onto Halloween and here are some of the family costumes the year of COVID.

And one more Linda Warren quilt! Her daughter Jodi Parker is holding it up in this pic.

While we were able to return to church in the fall, we still couldn't gather groups of youth together so I helped put on one more virtual event--this time a youth conference. My favorite part was the non-virtual service project we did collecting food for a local food bank and while our goal was to get 2020 lbs of food, people were so generous that we ended up with twice that amount--4132 lbs!

We made a Thanksgiving visit to the botanical gardens...

and still had to wear masks in the butterfly house.

I know Millie, I was not happy about this either.

Rainbow Mountain continued to be a favorite destination this year.

And this was the year I bought the huge rug that is still in the living room as of August 2026 and I desperately want to replace. It sure was pretty when it was new though.

Trampolines were very hard to find in 2020 since everyone was stuck at home, everyone needed something to entice their kids to play outside before they went crazy.

These three are still good buddies.

Nick got his accounting degree done at Athens State. He was not about to participate in an actual graduation ceremony but he did put on the cap to make me happy.