Small Group Out. Neon NIghts.

Last Wednesday was S.G.O.(Small Group Out) for the Herd. It is exactly what it sounds like. Going out with your small group. For my small group out I joined my sixth grade group with the other sixth grade girls small group. The best idea EVER! I have to give mad props to my girl Amy Green for planning this one.

I would tell you what we did in detail but I thought pictures speak way LOUDER than words. So here you go. Pictures with some words.

Let the story begin. For the 6th grade small group out the plan was to go to roller skating at Fountian Valley Skating Center. To rent skates and skate for 2 hours it was going to cost $11.50. The perfect thing to for our small group out!

My Name is Cheryl Kay Krake. Can we be friends?

We all had to wait for everyone to arrive for our 80's/Neon night skating extravaganza to begin!

More Waiting...

they started to get comfortable with the camera.

Some were too cool(Cold) to hang outside.

My Signature pose. Naturally.

By this time I had noticed that people were going up to the door but not being let in. Long story short we got times and dates mixed up and there was no open skate that night until 8:30. The time the parents were going to be back to pick everyone up. Bummer I know. In the mean time we were going to go to boomers which was conveniently next door.

Fortunately enough for us we had a mom found out what was going on and she didn't want us to miss out on our skate night since we were all dressed up and such. She went up to the group who happen to be a church and asked if we could join them. She even talked to the pastor. He happened to know our Pastor, Mr. Greg Rhodes himself. The pastor the said that we could join in there church's private party. SCORE. Even better than that is that they only charged us $5 to get in and get skates. DOUBLE SCORE.

Once we got in it was on like Donkey Kong. The night which got off to a slow start was off! Of course we start off with the group shots.

Cute Picture.

Silly Picture. Naturally.

How could you resist not hanging with us. I mean COME ON.

I mean really.

This was the only photo of all the leaders. Lightening is kinda bad but whatevs. We are real cool!

This is what we call the Whip people. Actually I don't think they were actually trying to do it but it looks like it. Basically in this epic move in roller durby this is where you true to use man power to push a team member(Left in the Picture) ahead of the other players. *If you want to learn more about Roller Durby you can either ask me or watch Whip It. Viewer Discression advised.

Obviously she is the dancer of the group.

And this was me. I only made it around the rink 5 times. Definite struggle.

So naturally from all that rollering I would get a Diet Coke.

Win.

By the end of the night we were all tired and ready to go home. A very successful event!

No Electricity. Bummer.

Welp today Edison, the electricity people have decided to do some maintenance on my building from 8:30 am to 5 Pm meaning I have no electricity in the WHOLE BUILDING! Now when I first head I thought no big deal I'll just shower the night before and put my hair up. I won't even need to leave the apartment early I can just do my normal morning thing and then to to work at the church at 1:30. Perfect schedule right? WRONG. No electricity means EVERY thing in the building is down. Do you see where I'm going? I live on the 18th floor. Got it yet? Ok I'll tell you. No electricity means no ELEVATOR! Yea. Now I would say that's fine but if you have ever tried to walk down 18 floors then you know it sucks bad. Last time I did it I was weezing up a storm after and ended up taking the elevator back up to my apartment to rest.

So that leads me here to starbucks where I am spending my morning blogging, facebooking, doing homework, taking pictures of myself and naturally people watching. I mean this is what I call a very successful morning. Don't you agree?

I mean this picture obviously shows how productive I'm being!

Hi! My name is Cheryl Kay Krake. Can we be friends?

I would get stuck at the table by the bathroom. Awesome.

Ok folks, I'm going to leave you now. I need to do some actual work.

I leave you with my song of the day as I sit at Starbucks.

"Fantasy" By Mariah Carey

Check it out. Dance it out. I know you want to.

Small Scare. God is in Control.He>I & My Plans.

Yesterday was not an ordinary day in my life. That is for sure. It started out fine but then my plans started to change. Last Night I was planned to teach at the Herd(the junior high group I work with). About 5:00pm, just a couple of hours before I had to teach, the headache that I had got progressively worse. Now I'm going to talk in "doctor terms" or if your my mom, "Mommy terms." At 11 am when the head ache started my pain scale was at about a 3 when I hadn't had any pain since the surgery. Now it wasn't pain from my incision it was a very similar head ache to what I had before I went into the ER the first time and had my surgry. By 5pm my pain scale was at about a 7. Now when it comes to head aches I have learned to deal with them, but since I did have my surgery I needed to take every precaution. At 5pm I called the nurse's hotline and she told me I need to go into the ER in LA where I had the surgery.

I honestly didn't want to go. I remembered being in the hospital before and it wasn't great. I hate needles and them waking me up every hour not that I was sleeping anyway. I just didn't want to go. One of the guys on staff, Stephen was sitting by me when I found out and he told me I had to tell my Boss/Pastor/Friend, Jon. I did and he told me that I needed to go and it was going to be okay. God had a plan in this. We prayed with other staff and some of our students and then I was headed on my way out to LA. Jon wanted to send someone with me but I refused because I knew I was going to be okay. As freaked out as I seemed, I just knew God was in control. As I was talking with some of the staff before I left Jon even said well maybe God needs you in the emergency room to tell someone else about Jesus. All I can say is it is funny how God works.

I arrived at the Sunset Kaiser LA at about 7:30ish. As I was checking I just knew everything was going to be fine when the first man who checked me in had a LA Dodger lanyard on. (For those of you who do not know I am a Dodger fan. It's in my blood.) The nurse who checked me in was this cute little old women who's name was GINA! (Again for those of you who don't know that's my little car's name.) These may sound like dumb things for you but for me they were just the things I needed to just laugh. I know God put them in my path to help calm my already crazed heart. I was blessed to be seen pretty much right away. They checked me out then they put me in a wheel chair to wait. This was my view.

If you don't know this I am a very visual person so I like to take pictures. It was a great place to sit because whenever someone would turn the corner I would sort of freak them out cause they weren't expecting a person to be there. At this point my head ache was pretty bad so I'm sure my faces were pretty weird and so I'm pretty sure I freaked some people out as they turned the corner.

Once I got into my ER room the nurse had to take my blood. If you don't know this I HATE needles. I don't know why I just do. I'm a big baby about it. This time I was all alone so I had to grow up and deal. I had to take a picture to show how good I did. Look at all my blood.

As the nurse was taking my precious blood I had to laugh as I realized I was wearing a pair of my Christmas socks. What's even funnier I think about this is that I have more than one pair and I wear them all the time. They just make me happy. These ones helped with the pain and scare of the needle.

I had to stay in the ER till about 1:30 am. Not so great. It was no quiet place for sure. Sleeping was out of the question but I did have a little TV with some cable. The new show I found while I was in the ER was Extreme Couponing. Let me tell you people this show is ridiculous. Basically it is about people who clip coupons and save money. For example on one of the episodes I watched a women and her family got 4 FULL carts of food that would have cost over 1200 dollars and the only spent 52 dollars. It is ridiculous. It makes me want to clip coupons.

Once they got a CT scan they told me that they needed to keep me over night for observation. My main man Eddy transported me from the ER to the neurosurgery area where I would be staying for the night. My room was basically the same as the last one I was in except I wasn't in the ICU and I had a real bathroom with walls and everything in my room. When I got all settled my new nurse came in to start poking at me. I don't know what it is about hospitals but when ever I am in them people just seem to want to poke me. I was pretty popular cause my nurse came in EVERY hour to flash a bright light in my face. So as you can guess I did not get much sleep. Fortunately for me I had come prepared with my bible and ipod in case the TV got old which it did.

I woke up from my little nap or whatever you want to call the minimal amount of sleep I got. I decided to have my time with God. I opened my bible and started to read over James. By the way, James is such an encouraging book if you haven't read it I would suggest you do! Anyway as I was reading a man came into my room and he explained that he was the on call neurosurgeon. He started to tell me that my CT scan showed improvement since my surgery. Praise the Lord! He then told me that Dr.Chen who preformed the surgery would be in at about 8 am to check in with me.

My day nurses name was Chris. He was a very interesting fellow. After he asked me all the annoying questions I got to ask him a few. My first one that when ever I have a male nurse I ask is 'How the heck did you get into nursing?' Now I fully support male nurses I just wonder why don't you become a doctor. But anyway he did it because he was a medic in the navy and a friend told him that he could get into nursing and make good money. I mean sounds like a good plan to me right? If only I didn't hate needles. I then asked him his age because he looked really young and he had already been in the navy. He is 30. After that I figured that he would be okay to be my nurse but I had one more test. I asked him if he could score me some coffee from the nurses station. It took him a while but my man Chris came through big! Here is the view from my room and my beautiful but small cup of coffee.

Once he got me the coffee I knew he was a quality person.

After I got the coffee Dr.Chen and Arnie stopped by to check in on me. I had to apologize for standing them up before and that I didn't mean too. Dr. Chen actually laughed at me. I call that a success people. If you met this man you would understand. I don't think he laughs a lot. Through this process I'm helping to change that in him! haha. Anyway they told me that there were probably two reasons to my head ache. One being that my brain ventricles were shrinking to a normal size that fits around my brain. Me not being used to this was why I had a head ache. The second reason was because I was stressing myself out and not letting myself recover properly. This is something that is rather hard for me to do but I knew I had to do it. Dr.Chen also added that I am FREE TO FLY!! YAYA Aye Bay Bay here I come!!

Anyway, I'm doing good so no worries for now! Thanks for your prayers and sweet thoughts!

Chloe Siena Krake

It's official! Chloe Siena Krake has made her grand arrival! She is my...Cousin? Now this is a weird one. She is the new born daughter of my cousins, David an Lauren. I'm just going to call her my cousin! Anyway this beautiful bundle of Joy made her arrival at 3:21 am this morning weighing 8lbs 8oz and being 20 1/2 inches long!

Happy Birthday Chloe!

Recovery Doctors Appointment #2: Wound Check.

Yesterday I took the great adventure back to Sunset Kaiser Los Angeles. Now I since I'm giving you an update I'm going to tell you that it was a rough day. My appointment went well but everything around it seemed to just go wrong.

My day started out great by waking up, straightening my hair for the first time since surgery and getting out the door by 9:30 to make sure I made it to my 10:45 appointment on time. My Yahoo directions told me it would take 44 minutes to get there. So of course I give myself 5 minutes to get my free starbucks and that still leaves me 26 minutes early to my appointment. 11 minutes earlier than my Vince Lombari rule, which is if you are on time you are 15 minutes late and if you are 15 minutes early you are on time. Now I try to live by this rule but let's be real. Sometimes I just like to be late. It's like a street cred thing. Anyway back to yesterday, yesterday was not one of those days that I was looking to show up my street cred. I wanted to be early. Unfortunately due to the fact that I had to go into LA traffic was not on my side. Even in the middle of the morning. Plus let's add in the fact that the exit I was suppose to get off at was closed due to a community service cleaning. Lame. I know. After an hour and a half of what was suppose to be a 44 minutes drive I made it to where I was suppose to be.

When I finally got to where I was suppose to be and figured out where to park I basically booked it to get to my appointment 15 minutes late. Not so good. When I got there I went to check in and the women told me my appointment was on Monday NOT Wednesday. Perfect, I missed my appointment. Fortunately the women was able to get me checked out. Even though it wasn't Arnie I was ok with that. She told me to sit and I would be helped soon. 30 minutes into my wait I realized I parked in the parking structure and I was going to need cash to pay for it. I didn't have any on me. I asked the women at the desk if she knew where there was an ATM and she told me. My thoughts were, 'great I have to go to some sketch mexican food place to use the ATM. I love adventures.' about 10 minutes after that a women and her husband who had been waiting too were called in. As she passed me she handed me 4 dollars and she told me this was for parking. What a blessing! After an hour and 45 minutes of watching "all my children", coloring with some kids and reading they were ready to see me.

Dr. Nam was the doctor who checked my wound. He said I was doing great. He said since I wasn't drooling or falling asleep that he said those were good signs. Then he looked at my CT scan from after my surgery. I asked him if I was able to travel yet on a plane. He had said he didn't think so because I still had air pockets in my ventricles. The pressure of being on a plane would be really bad for that I guessed. I told him I was going home for easter and I had already bought my flight. Luckily he told me that I could travel if I talked with my surgeon first. So I went and scheduled my appointment with my surgeon 2 days before I leave for the BAY!

So I leave you with this. Even though my day went a little bit differently then planned God put many small blessings in it to show me he still had it under control. Isn't it funny how when we doubt God or what he is doing that at those moments he totally comes through. He puts his little blessings in. It's almost like he looks at me and says, "Cheryl, Really? Are you for reals still doubting me?" I serve a great God and he still loves me even though I make mistakes. How freaking COOL is that!

The Story.

This last week I have been feeling convicted about sharing Christ with others. I'm not talking about just anyone. I'm not talking about that old man I see every morning or one of my doctors. I don't have a problem letting them know the only reason I'm alive now it because of Christ. I'm talking about sharing and introducing people to Jesus. And by "people" I mean my students. My beautiful wonderful Junior Highers. Not only them but all the other students I come in to contact with at Bethany Church.(the Church I work at)

Having grown up in the church, I find myself sometimes numb to the bible. I just think of it as another book. When really it is so much more than that! It is God's love letter he wrote to me for life! To show me how to live, to give me hope, to tell me His story. That's the part I think is the coolest. The bible is a story! For me I know that I don't always look at it as that. I just think of it as this long book that I have to read because people tell me to. I don't look at it as the precious letter that it is.

This past sunday night I attended a service at Rock Harbor church and Darrin McWatters was preaching. They are in the middle of a series called Witnesses-Encounters with Jesus. Leading up to easter they are looking into different people's encounter with Jesus. This past week Darrin spoke on Pilates encounter with Jesus. I tell you this because God used Darrin this past week to show me and remind me how the bible is HIS love letter, his story for me to come to know him! Darrin did such a good job of high lighting the interaction between Pilate and Jesus. He got me involved in thinking about the whole interaction and about who you say Christ is? Do we deny who he is or do we own up and take up our cross and follow him? I tell you this to share with you how by me seeing the whole story I better understood and walked away with something because I got the story. I don't tell you all this to encourage you to go to Rock Harbor or anything but just to show you how Darrin shared the story with me passionately and showed how important it was.

Now why the heck did I bring up my students? Well that is just it. I was reminded that I'm not just telling my small group, my students just anything. I'm sharing with them God's love letter to them. I think for me I don't share it as the great story it is. I don't think that I really ask God to use me to share his story. I just go about reading the things I'm given and guide the conversation. Not always letting God just use me to share his story. It doesn't just take telling them this story but also living it out, showing them. This is something that I want to do. I want to share Christ's love though his story and through my life. I want all my actions and reactions to lead others to Christ!

"Your life is testifying now who you say Christ is."

-Darrin McWatters

I would encourage you to watch this and think about Who Do you say Christ is? You are testifying who you think Christ is!

http://www.rockharbor.org/media/message/pilate-decisively-undecided/

Verse of the Week. Week 1.

Since I am not very good at keeping up on things I have found I just try and add more. It's a bad habit that I am trying to fix. For example I started the whole study song of the week. That was an epic fail when I ended up having brain surgery. But I fully intend to continue it this next week.

I tell you that I am bad a keeping up with things the same time I'm adding a new one. Now some of you may say why don't you just stick with one thing? Trust me I ask myself that too. I don't know why I keep adding but I guess it's more that I want you all to know what's been on my mind as well as my heart.

So here is to adding more to my life! Verse of the week! Woot Woot. I hope this brings you encouragement.

"You will keep in perfect peace him who's mind is steadfast, because he trusts in you."

Isaiah 26:3

Update. Pictures. Yippee.

Here are some of the pictures of my adventure know as brain surgery and recovery. Enjoy.
The SCAR. Kind of gross I know but some of you have been asking. This picture was taken Saturday morning. My surgery was on wednesday.
Sunset Kaiser L.A. was where it all happened. Here is the parking pass my parents got. Plus my wrist band telling everyone who I was just in case I forgot. It's like when I was a baby.
I got cards from all sorts of people. Some being from the students and staff at Bethany(The church I'm an intern at.) I also got flowers! I could feel the love!

This was one of the things on my bucket list. To NEED to drive and cart and to ACTUAlLY use one. Not as glorious as I had thought but I got to cross it off my list!

Mommy got to hang out with me for a couple of days! We went to lunch at Red Robin. So good.
Mommy and I before shopping day #2.

I also wanted to add in this post my thank yous! I have been so bless with tons of great people around me sending love and their prayers. It's great to know that I have so many people all around praying for me. I'm blessed!

Thanks everyone for loving me! God has blessed me with you all!