Please, if you would be so kind, continue to pray for our Easter Miracle.
For details….see 3/11/08 post below. I thank you from the bottom of my heart!

Blessings,

Tonja

Here she is…the very first Barbie, released on March 9, 1959. This is just the first of her many incarnations.



Note how her skin tone and eyes changed in Barbie #3 and 4.

Here she is as an African American and an Asian:


Can you believe this…here she as a muslim.

But, I bet you never thought you would see her this way?

Or like this!!!

Finally, someone got tired of her skinny self and tried to show the world a different view. The Body Shop came out with these posters and print ads in 2004.
Mattel immediately sued and won…the ads had to come down!

Shame isn’t it that millions of little girls around the world have this impossibly thin doll as a model. The average American woman in 2007 was a size 14/16. But, we give our daughters and grandaughters a doll with a body that can never be attained. If she were alive, Barbie would be a woman standing 7ft.2 in. tall with a waistline of 18 inches, a 39 in. bust, and 33 in. hips. She would weigh 125 pounds. In fact, she would need to walk on all fours just to support her peculiar proportions. Her tiny feet could never support her weight, much less walk!

Yet media continues to push that skinny is the ONLY beauty. Well, I believe beauty comes in all sizes…and all ages. We need to remember that our bodies are only a container. Who we are…our souls…merely live there.

Yesterday, I went to Sonic and ordered a Diet Cherry Coke. I asked for extra cherry. I meant extra cherry syrup…they thought I meant the actual fruit. When I finished my drink, there were 14 cherries inside! Oh well, the drink was good…and the cherries were beautiful! But, I did NOT eat all 14…just 3!
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“O taste and see that the Lord is good.” Psalm 34:8

Easter is March 23rd this year. Easter is always the 1st Sunday after the 1st
full moon after the Spring Equinox (which is March 20). This dating of
Easter is based on the lunar calendar that Hebrew people used to identify
passover, which is why it moves around on our Roman calendar.

Based on the above information, Easter can actually be one day earlier
(March 22) which is very rare.

Here’s the interesting information. This year is the earliest Easter any
of us will ever see the rest of our lives! And only the most elderly of our
population have ever seen it this early (95 years old or above). And none of
us have ever, or will ever, see it a day earlier! Here’s the facts:

1) The next time Easter will be this early (March 23) will be the year 2228
(220 years from now). The last time it was this early was 1913 (so if you’re
95 or older, you are the only ones that were around for that!).

2) The next time it will be a day earlier, March 22, will be in the year
2285 (277 years from now). The last time it was on March 22 was 1818. So, no
one alive today has or will ever see it any earlier than this year!
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So the next time Easter is this early…I’ll be celebrating with Jesus!

I received this in an e-mail today…thanks, Donna!

I think this must have been “funny kid” week at school…Here is just a sampling.

I am getting ready for my spring programs at school and our theme this year is Follow The Shepherd. I have a BIG stuffed sheep that stands about 2 feet high, and is a very good replica. Not cutesy at all…very true to life. When the classes come in, they sit on the floor in a circle, and I had already put the sheep next to my chair. A sweet little boy, aged 3, who happened to sit right in front of the sheep…didn’t even wait for me to sit down before he exclaimed…loudly, “This sheep is freaking me out!” Needless to say, I moved Daisy, the sheep, quickly!

In another class, 4 year olds, I was explaining what the word ‘twitch’ meant. As in, …”the nose on the sheep goes twitch, twitch, twitch..”. How would YOU explain that word? Well, I asked them if they had ever looked at their dog and noticed how his nose would wiggle ever so slightly as he smelled of something. No, none of them had ever seen such a thing. Then a precious little boy, who has the ‘southern drawl’ down to perfection, said, “Well, Miz. Owens, I ain’t never see’d a dog do that, but I heard about it one time!” I think he was just trying to make me feel better. Then a cute little darling tried to explain to me that a ‘twitch’ is a ‘twin witch’. (Her mom said yes, she did have a movie about twin witches…and they were called ‘twitches’ so they wouldn’t be ‘witches’.) Oh the information you gather in a preschool!

Another 3 year old told me she knew a better song than the one I was singing. “Really?”, I said, “sing it for me.” And she started belting out a song about…”you look real good in your furry top boots and your apple-bottomed jeans.” Well…I didn’t let that one go any farther. Someone explained later, that it is a rap song…with not very child friendly words….she has a teen-aged sister…’nuff said!

And the last one didn’t happen to me, but a fellow teacher. Somehow the topic of baptism came up, and trying to not offend any one’s religious preferences as to immersion or sprinkling…she kindly explained that there were several different thoughts on ways to baptize. One child who obviously was well-educated on the subject said that someone he knew had gotten ‘dunked in the water’. “Why would you do that?” asked a little girl. “Cause it washes away your sins,” he said. Then another child popped up with the rest of the explanation. “Then you get all new sins!,” she said, as if that was the whole idea. The teacher quickly moved to another activity!