My Life
I am Mindi Jo Lovell (maiden Howard), born December 25, 1990 in Idaho Falls, Idaho, USA. Born of goodly parents. I grew up in Rigby Idaho. We lived in town until I was 8 then moved out of town towards Ririe next to my Grandma and Grandpa Burtenshaw down a dirt road with 5 acres. My mom likes being close to her parents and with more land we could have a dog. When we lived in town I had a bestfriend that lived around the corner from where we lived and we loved playing together. It was fun to be so close to friends, I remember Riley getting in trouble because he would go across to the neighbors house without asking.
Erin was born around the time we moved into our new house. We lived with my grandma and grandpa Burtenshaw a little while while our house was being built. We loved our new house, we didn’t finish the basement when we first moved in so it was just wall frames and cement floors downstairs. I remember my mom used to let us play playdough on the cement since it didn’t ruin anything, there is probably still yellow playdough stuck to the cement under the carpet. Riley and I used to share the upstairs room at the top of the house. Erin’s room was the piano room while she was a baby. I was 7 when she was born but I remember rocking her to sleep when she was a baby.
Riley and I used to love going outside and having adventures. We had tree forts and cool hideouts all over our backyard. Wild onions grow everywhere in the summer and we used to pretend to be pioneers and sleep outside and eat onions for dinner. Our first dog was a boxer named Lady, she was a pretty fawn color, medium sized and only barked at visitors but never bit anyone. She was a good watch dog. She was hit by a car my when I was in 11th grade and died. When we were little Grandma Burtenshaw had dalmatian dogs, I remember the cute puppies. Our Grandpa Burtenshaw one year for easter brought us a few chickens, for a while they stayed in a box in the basement until it became warm enough for them outside, we had to protect them from all the animals. Erin didn’t mean to but she stepped on little red and broke its leg and he died, it was a sad day. Later we had ducks, we realized they pooped a lot and never got them again. We also had rabbits, whose were my favorite. We tried making baby bunnies but they never lived. My favorite rabbit is mini lop lionhead, they are so cute! We went through about 5 rabbits before we stopped. As of 2013 my dad is now in the bee business.
School
I went to Harwood Elementary for kindergarten, Kinghorn Elementary 1st and 2nd grade, then back to Harwood Elementary for 3rd- 5th Grade. After that I went to Jefferson Middle School 6th-7th grade, the first class in that building after it was built. Next came Junior High 8th-9th grade, I went to the old Junior High that is the red brick building that used to be right in town.
Finally I went to Rigby High School 10th- 12th grade. Since then they have built a new high school. I loved high school my dad was a teacher for my 10th grade year but for my last 2 years he was the vice principal. I had him for one trimester as a AP Biology teacher and that was interesting but I loved having him as the Vice Principal. If I was ever late to class I could see him in the hall sometimes and he would walk me to class so I wasn’t marked tardy. If I ever got bored in class I could ask to go to the office if we weren’t doing anything important and they didn’t say no. My favorite subject was science, I didn’t like math or english even though all my favorite teachers were english teachers. I took a few college classes while in high school, Advanced Placement (AP) Biology, AP English, US History, European Civilization, Medical Terminology, and I also received my Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA) my 11th grade year. We only had to do 40 hours of clinical work but my last 5 hours I got peed on by an old man and I never used my CNA to work in a nursing home.
All through high school 9th-12th grade I did golf. For the first 2 years my dad was the coach until my last year then they didn’t let him since he was too busy as vice principal. He still came to practices and a lot of our tournaments though to watch. I went to state 3 out of my 4 years. We didn’t go my 11th grade year because Blackfoot cheated and they went instead of us. Our first year we got first in Districts, districts is what qualifies you to go to state, the top 2 teams went from our district out of 4. Which was very surprising since Hillcrest usually wins and we come in 2nd. Olivia Weber was from Hillcrest and also the state champion, she was the same age as me so I played against her all 4 years. Golf was very fun, since the tournaments were outdoors and so long we usually missed school to have a tournament.
Golf season was March till end of May, we still had snow usually all of March so we would have to practice inside the gym, or lift weights. High school golf you never know what the weather is going to be like that spring, it could be sunny, or super windy, or raining, even snowing. We usually packed hats and gloves in our golf bag just to be prepared, along with a few goodies in case you got hungry. Golf was usually a relaxing time for me, and even now its a chance to relax on my own or go out with my dad or husband and just have fun. I graduated from high school May of 2009 with 29 college credits. We had our graduation in the BYU-Idaho Hart building.
When I turned 17 years old I got my first official job working at Journey’s with disabled kids. I worked there the rest of my highschool years and partly through college. I loved working there, I worked with some amazing kids that changed my life and I will never forget them. We mainly worked on activities of daily living, tieing shoes, counting money, telling time, and social behaviors. This was a blast we would go swimming in the summer up to Heise, we would go bowling, go see movies, play basketball. I had the best job ever. About the time I graduated from high school the state made some cut backs and said that we weren’t allowed to go swimming or bowling or anything fun like that unless we were working on a specific goal. So we had to cut back a little bit on some of the big things but that meant going to the park more and other fun activities. Some of the kids were a little rough and hard to get along with, but in the end they usually ended up pretty close with you.
College
After high school I started college September of 2009. I lived across from the Hart building, and the Snow building in a little blue apartment complex called Snowview. I had one of my best friends Megan Hardyman from high school live next door to me incase I didn’t like my roommates, then I could at least escape over to her place. My first year (freshman year) was a blast I had 3 amazing roommates that loved life, and school, and loved to have fun. Of course 2 of them were graduating and the other one received her mission call. So at the end of the semester I received all new roommates.
One of my favorite things we did was we would make a crib and then all pile in it and watch movies, after our homework was done of course. Cribs are simply made by pushing 2 couches together so that the cushions are facing each other, this makes it nice and cozy. I learned that you aren’t doing finals week right until you pull an allnighter and eat pizza for breakfast the next morning, usually the small Little Tony’s dollar pizza’s. I took my last final and all my roommates and a bunch of friends went out to Big Juds in Archer to celebrate. After we came home later around 10pm my roommate and I started our clean check that had to be done the next morning by 8. We drank Rootbeer, ate homemade cakeballs, and listened to lifehouse all night, oh we also watched the movie “Proposal” a few times. My roommate and I stayed up all night cleaning, finally around 7:30 am we finished and we were able to take a half an hour nap before clean checks. Wow that was quite the night, and my first semester ended.
My Ancestors
My first ancestors to come to America from Germany were Otto Herman Dahl and his soon to be wife Stephanie Louise Ludwig Hettinger Dahl. The story of how the Dahls became members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from Otto Dahl’s personal life history.
“My father worked for a gas company in Karlsruhe. I used to take his lunch to him as a four or five year old boy. He had a friend also working for the same company. One day he was invited to his friend and wife’s home. They lived in an apartment up on the fifth floor and they had a “cottage meeting” with Latter Day Saint Elders. Shortly thereafter they accepted the gospel and were baptized into the church.”
Thankfully they joined the church because it wasn’t too long after in 1914 World War I broke out and his father was called into the German Army, sent over to Russia and was killed in action first part of the war in 1915. His mother had three boys Otto was the oldest and never remarried. Otto decided as a young teenager he wanted to come to America and in December 1928 him and his girlfriend Stephanie came across. More can be read in Otto’s personal life history. These courageous Germans are my Great grandfather and grandmother. I am a quarter german and my father says I have their stubbornness.
What I remember. My great grandmother Stephanie died in Nov 1998 when I was almost 8 years old so my time with her was short and what I remember may not be accurate, but I still want to share these memories.The last years of their lives they lived in a mobile home in my Grandma Howards yard next to the canal in Chester Idaho. I remember their home being old and fainted, the edges silver but the main color was green, very chipped and worn down. It wasn’t very big, and had a flat roof. There front door I think faced the canal instead of my grandmothers house which was only 30 feet away, which I thought was weird. When I was younger it didn’t comprehend to me that she was my great grandmother, I thought she was a scary, goofy lady that lived next door. The only memory I have, and could be an imagined memory is sitting on the steps of the patio that led into her home, probably with some cousins. She came out with crazy grey hair. She didn’t do anything scary but we didn’t know her, so we usually left to go play. In my defense I was very young and my dad says she died with a thick German accent and would throw german words into english conversations. So I probably couldn’t understand majority of what she said.
Grandpa Burtenshaw
I think I was about 15 the day I got a call that my grandpa was in the hospital. He had fallen off a horse and landed on his leg straight. Mitzi saw the house loose with a saddle on and found my grandpa next to a pile. She called my mom who came up to help, my grandpa refused to call an ambulance so they had to put him in the car and take him to the hospital. He had shattered his knee and broke his tibia, I only went to see him once in the hospital even though he was there over a month, it was sad to see him there, the one time I did see him I mentioned a hot dog and made him throw up. He ended up having bowel problems also so he didn’t get the right nutrition he needed and his leg didn’t heal. After a month of being in the hospital trying to heal his leg they decided to amputate it above the knee.
My grandpa Burtenshaw now has half a leg! He hasn’t ridden a horse sense but he still keeps horses to keep him occupied. He used to ride them and train them, Riley would help him, especially helped him after his accident. My grandpa still loves to go out and feed the horses and sell them to people. He likes to use the lawn mower to get around. I remember I would sometimes drive home from school and see my grandpa out on the lawn mower down the street with his pitchfork talking to the neighbor. My grandpa always has a story to tell, he used to work at the INL for a job, he loves telling stories about it. He was also in the Korean War watching over POWs, Prisoners of War, I found it interesting that they gave each prisoner only one bowl. If they lose their bowl they didn’t get any food. He took relief time in Japan so he has a few treasures from there. My grandpa has a treat bucket he keeps in the cupboard, he used to make us sing him a song so we could have a treat.
