(please click to view on black // canon 5d mark ii, canon 17-40 f/4 l, 17mm, iso 100, f/22, 0.6sec // buy print)

No, a bunch of Cholla cactus grouped together isn’t called a gaggle. But I always liked that word and felt like using it today. Sure, it usually refers to a flock of geese that are actually not flying, but according to Dictionary.com, it can also mean an assortment of related things.

Feeling like that was a bunch of useless information and curious why I decided to share that with you?

Me too.

We’ve had an incredibly busy, stressful and amazing week. So much has happened with our pending adoption that we haven’t had much time to think, let alone rest much.

So when I saw the rainy clouds rolling into Phoenix yesterday afternoon, it felt like a perfect opportunity to take  a break, throw Lyla in the truck and go for a drive. The clouds weren’t actually dropping rain, but there was “virga” hanging off the bottoms, and I knew when the sun went down, all that virga would just get lit up like a Christmas tree.

Cholla cactus are notorious for capturing light in their needles. It’s one of the more beautiful things about the desert. And one of the most ironic. When they aren’t looking all gorgeous with light, those needles can bore themselves through your shoes, your jeans, your clothes and embed themselves right in your skin. And also they are quite painful.

But when they look like this…you just think…”awwww, they are so cute.”

Anyways. This image is pretty tall on the blog, so clicking on it will make it fit to your screen. Also looks a bit better!

Happy Friday everyone.

Thank you.

Never have those two words been so unable to express how my wife and I feel this morning.

It all started with a simple plea for help. And then we saw something happen that we did not expect.

By the middle of the afternoon, we had already raised 50% of our goal of $9000. We never thought we’d get halfway in the first day. But then people got home from work. And logged onto Facebook. And suddenly we were watching this miracle happen. It could only have been God’s doing.

What was amazing was all the people who were pulling for us and felt like they were invested in the outcome. From texts, phone calls and emails, we knew of so many people hanging out on this website, reloading the blog post, watching the total keep going up. Cheering for it. Crying.

One of my buddies said he kept yelling out the total to his wife across the house. All evening.

Then somewhere around 10:00pm last night we hit our goal. And then we passed it. People kept giving. And are still donating through this morning. In fact, as of right now, we’re almost $1,000 over what we asked.

I don’t even know how that’s possible. In 13 hours…our families, friends…and complete and utter strangers, donated over $9,000.

To us, it was a symbol of selflessness, community and definitely God’s goodness.

Thank you doesn’t feel like enough… definitely not proportional. But right now, it’s all we’ve got.

Friends and family (and those of you we haven’t met yet)…

This is it. In just two short weeks, give or take, we should be adopting a baby.

Before we get into the details, here is a brief overview of our story, mainly for those that don’t really know it.

Jina and I have been married almost 14 years. After trying for many years to get pregnant with no success, we realized we were going to need to talk to the professionals. At our doctor’s prompting, we decided to try six months of artificial insemination… still no success. We started to look into adoption, but instead decided to attempt In Vitro Fertilization. It was expensive and definitely not a sure thing, but we wanted to at least try. Amazingly and against a lot of odds, we ended up pregnant. Our daughter, Lyla, changed our lives in 2008.

Jump forward to early 2011, we again started talking about adoption. At this time, it seemed obvious that we weren’t going to get pregnant naturally, and we felt this was the right path for us. We went through the exhaustive process and became certified last summer. Throughout the fall, different children were presented to us through our agency and Child Protective Services. Each time we weren’t the family chosen by the state. It was a roller coaster of emotions. Yet little did we know, that was just the beginning.

In November, we got pregnant. It was a huge shock. A major surprise. A miracle had happened.

But…just a few weeks later we lost the baby. We were devastated. We felt numb and wondered what God was trying to show us. For me, I felt done with all of it. Maybe it was enough for us to have Lyla and each other. I just couldn’t go through the ups and downs anymore. And Jina was struck with a deeper grief than we had ever known.

That brings us almost to the present.

A week and a half ago, Jina and I sat down to talk. And that conversation was a game-changer. We don’t know exactly why or how, but through the course of the conversation, we realized maybe neither of us were done. Maybe God still had a plan to build our family. We decided to let our agency know we were open to being considered for an adoption (with some parameters to safeguard our hearts a bit). But before we had a chance to call the agency…

Four days later our phone rings. A friend of a friend knew of a pregnant mom looking to place her baby for adoption. (Really… this is sometimes how this happens!) So Jina and I talked. And we prayed. And we talked some more. It seemed that this might just be it. Maybe this baby was for us. Maybe this baby would be ours.

Since that day, our lives have been turned upside down. We didn’t know much about private adoptions other than you need lawyers. So we got some of those, and now we are putting the pieces together.

And did we mention…two weeks? The birth mom is due February 14th, but with any pregnancy this far along, we know it could be any day now. Who knows.

But what we do know is that we were not expecting this at all… which is the main gist of this letter. Because of the super-fast time frame, plus the need for 3 lawyers to get it done, we need roughly $9,000-10,000 within the next couple of weeks. Needless to say, that’s a lot of money for us to come up with that quickly. When we were going through our agency, we had some time to put the funds together.  But when we got pregnant, all of that was put on hold. Now, with our hearts just responding to the situation before us, we’re unsure how it will all unfold.

So we need your help. Further down the page is a form to donate money through Pay Pal. If you feel led to help us, you can use that form or contact us for other methods.  Every little bit helps. PLEASE pass this on to any friends or people that you think might want to know our story and help as well.

Many of you have already reached out to us in a variety of ways to help make this possible. We feel so thankful for your support, prayers and most of all, friendship.

- Mike (with a lot of editing from Jina)

PS. Just to add to the unexpected fun…we have no idea if it’s a boy or a girl. Here’s to surprises!

(note, the form below has a drop-down for donation amount options, or other)

******UPDATE: Because of some offline donations we’ve received that aren’t in the total below, we’ve adjusted the amount we need to raise from $9000 to $8000. 

******UPDATE at 10:06pm: Well that’s it! Unbelievably we hit our $9,000 goal and then some tonight. We’ll have more to say and write tomorrow sometime, but right now…we are humbled, stunned and blown away that we somehow raised this much money in just 13 hours. Only God could have done that. We are so blessed. Thank you all!

It’s been a long time since I was in high school. A long time. In fact, the big two-decade reunion is coming up next year. Yikes. Feels like so long ago.

For Brianna though, it’s her final year and the sky is the limit. She loves playing guitar and may attend a college here in town or in California, perhaps the San Francisco area. She doesn’t know yet, which is half the fun of being in her position. Nothing is written, you get to find your path.

She showed up for her session with family in tow…older sister down from Flagstaff just for the pictures, her brother the Dbacks-Red Sox fan and both parents, the dad of which kind of resembled Steve Jobs. You can decide for yourself further down.

Loved hanging out with these guys for awhile. They were a ton of fun and you could tell how much they loved each other.

I wish you all the best of luck going forward! Especially Brianna and this awesome new chapter of your life. Thank you guys!

(please click to view on black // canon 5d mark ii, tamron 17-35mm 2.8, 17mm, iso 100, f/16, 1/125 // buy print)

If you ordered a copy of my Stormchasing Arizona book, or happened to see my Best of 2011, you may have seen this image already.

But it was one of my top five probably from last year’s monsoon season, so I felt like it was owed it’s own blog post. Right?

Am I the only one that believes his images have feelings and would feel shunned if they didn’t get their own blog time? I mean, yes, this one made it into the book, but they all know the blog is the shiznit. The place you want to be. Where the magic happens.

So ANYWAYS, this is from north of Tucson overlooking a huge cotton field. Awesome storm on the horizon dropping rain. Nothing I like more than a wide vista or landscape with a distant rain storm.

There was also a timelapse to go with this.

I humbly apologize to this image for taking so long to give it the honor it so richly deserved. You weren’t forgotten. Just lost in the shuffle. I wont let it happen again.

(please click to view on black // canon 5d mark ii, canon 17-40 f/4 l, 20mm, f/4, iso 5000, 30 sec // buy print)

It’s funny. We were freezing cold at Joshua Tree National Park when the sun went down, but then the stars came out and none of that mattered.

My buddy Heath O’Fee found this tree. Earlier the lot of us had been right under it, shooting upwards at the stars while someone light-painted the rocks. We were all having so much fun taking pictures of things we normally do not. The night sky. It’s fairly new to me and I want to explore it more.

But then we all kind of dispersed to find our own compositions in and around the rocks. And I found this one. I thought the sky would light up nicely on the horizon because of the far off cities and the sun having gone down earlier. The tree growing between the rocks was pure awesome.

The real treat though…was one of my cohorts doing his own light-painting on the far side of that tree. I decided to take advantage and so I waited for him to take another shot and then I took mine.

No idea who it was, but thank you.

It’s not often I get to hang out with a guy from the National Weather Service, so this shoot was especially fun for me. Matt works at the Phoenix office and I didn’t get to meet him when I had a brief tour during the summer. So it was awesome to chill out with him, Keren, Julian and Emma! No, we didn’t talk about the weather the ENTIRE time, but there was definitely some pretty nerdy moments going on.

Emma just recently started sitting up, so Keren wanted to get some family photos. Emma is also quite skilled at cute pigtails and eating toy giraffes.

Julia can feed ducks and throw bread into a lake like no other, plus he’s pretty awesome at teeball.

Thanks so much for letting me walk around with you guys and grab some pictures. You have a wonderful family!

The plan was great except for absolutely zero clouds anywhere that first evening. Photographers hate that.

So when the sky is boring, I usually turn my camera on my buddies and start shooting them instead. We setup camp in the early afternoon and then went on a short hike to a dam with no water. Along the way I snapped some shots of the guys and a few of the beautiful landscape around us. The trees were just amazing, but it was mostly just a ton of fun to hang out with some friends I don’t see very often and get to know everyone a bit better.

Had a blast guys, hope we all can do this again down the road! (minus the 25 degree overnight temps)