Well, after a couple more fun surf sessions, a day of snorkeling in aquarium-like waters with porpoises and neon colored fish, an authentic Hawaiian Luau, and a drive up the coast to a perfect white-sand beach, we're packing our bags for the morning flight home. It's not easy leaving a place like this. We may just have to come back soon.

Here's a picture of Aidan at the Luau. Is he as cute as I think he is? Sometimes you wonder if you're imagining things because you're a parent and it's your kid.

Mi Familia :)

The view from our lanai was breathtaking. These pics don't really do it justice.

Oh, I almost forgot... that perfect white-sand beach I mentioned above (Hapuna Beach), well, we got kicked off the beach because there was a tiger shark sighting. I guess there were 5 sharks ranging in size from 8-20 feet lurking around near the shore. They were first spotted by an airplane flying over the beach. We got there just after the sighting and everyone was standing on the shore dripping wet looking out at the sharks. So we enjoyed the perfect beach for about 10 minutes before they made us leave. I don't know why I'm complaining, getting kicked out is better than being eaten alive :) Here's a pic of the guy closing the gate on our way out.

This image is a tribute to David Jay on his birthday. For all of you ladies waiting in line for a little DJ love ... Don't hate me cuz you're jealous. haha!

I also want to give a shout out to my good friend Mike Kitada who's birthday was yesterday. Happy birthday Mike!

My wife Julie is quite talented at planning vacations. She plans everything down to the last detail and does all of her booking and research online. This time, she picked a beachfront condo in Kona, Hawaii and I have to say that this is paradise! Not only do we have an amazing 180 degree view from the kitchen, living room, and balcony, we also have wifi so I can brag about it here on my blog :) I went surfing today at Kahaluu right in front of the famous "Little Blue Church". The waves were about chest to head high and lined up perfectly and the water was about 80 degrees! I'll be back there tomorrow for sure!

Here's a view from our balcony!

Aidan having supper and watching the sunset.

Oh yeah, and I guess this post can be for Friday since I'm going to be on a plane most of today. Here's the video clip of the outtakes from the Thirst Relief drawing I said I would try to post a while back. Enjoy!

Here's the video from the ultrasound I promised! If you want to find out the gender click on the videos below :)



I'm off to Hawaii for a much needed family vacation! I'll try to continue my posting streak while I'm there! Thanks for stopping by!

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention... I'm doing a live Pictage sponsored 1-hr webinar today (Thursday) at 4pm PST. I believe it's free to anyone who wants to listen in whether you're a Pictage user or not. The title of the webinar is "Colón's Top Ten Marketing Tips". I think there are about 200 people signed up so far. If you're interested, this is how you attend:

Go to: http://pictageevents.webex.com (do not include www in the address bar)
Once at the site, you will see the meeting. Click on "enroll".
When prompted, the password is colon (all lowercase)

I'm excited about this! It will be interesting to see what it's like to give a 45 minute monolog without hearing or seeing anyone. Anyway.. try to check it out if you have time.

Hmm... which will it be? Waxing legs, or waxing surfboards? Shopping at the mall or shopping at Sport Chalet? Pottery painting or paintball tournaments? Balet at the Performing Arts Center or Ultimate Fighting Championship in Vegas?

I'm going to keep it a secret for now... but I'll post the video tomorrow!

Here's a pic of Julie's tummy

haha, jk.. my brother emailed this to me asking me if it was real or photoshopped. what do you think?

Here's a quote from Oswald Chamber (thanks Joni!) I thought it was so true and helpful for the prayer life!

"When thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and pray to thy Father which is in secret." Matthew 6:6

Jesus did not say - Dream about thy Father in secret, but pray to thy Father in secret. Prayer is an effort of will. After we have entered our secret place and have shut the door, the most difficult thing to do is to pray; we cannot get our minds into working order, and the first thing that conflicts is wandering thoughts. The great battle in private prayer is the overcoming of mental wool-gathering. We have to discipline our minds and concentrate on wilful prayer.

We must have a selected place for prayer and when we get there the plague of flies begins - This must be done, and that. "Shut thy door." A secret silence means to shut the door deliberately on emotions and remember God. God is in secret, and He sees us from the secret place; He does not see us as other people see us, or as we see ourselves. When we live in the secret place it becomes impossible for us to doubt God, we become more sure of Him than of anything else. Your Father, Jesus says, is in secret and nowhere else. Enter the secret place, and right in the centre of the common round you find God there all the time. Get into the habit of dealing with God about everything. Unless in the first waking moment of the day you learn to fling the door wide back and let God in, you will work on a wrong level all day; but swing the door wide open and pray to your Father in secret, and every public thing will be stamped with the presence of God.

Man, this is harder than I thought! I'm gonna fake it and change the date stamp to say Tuesday so it looks like I didn't miss a post. Is that bad?

It's super late and I need to drive home still. My wife has been an angel these past few days because she hasn't been giving me a hard time for working late. She has two good reasons for letting me slide. First, I'm taking half of tomorrow off for our appointment to find out the gender of our baby! We are so excited!!! Julie is hoping for a girl and I'm kinda on the fence. I know that if it's a girl I will be leaping for joy because I MUST have a girl to spoil and protect. Plus, if she looks anything like my Julie, she's going to be gorgeous! If it's a boy, I'll still be leaping for joy because I'll be thinking about the future with my two boys taking off and going camping together. I'll take them snowboarding, surfing, hiking, mountain climbing, paintballing, and all of those fun things dads can do with their boys that girls might not be into. Plus, if it's a boy.. then we're for sure trying for a girl next time which will force us to have 3 kids which is good because I've always wanted at least 3 kids. Part of me is afraid that if we have a girl we'll get too comfortable and content and stop at 2, which actually doesn't sound too bad anymore.

Oh, so the other reason Julie isn't calling me every five minutes to come home is because we're leaving for a family vacation to Hawaii on Friday. This means I have to get completely caught up with important things before I leave. There is so much to do! Tomorrow is pretty much shot because I know instead of working we'll be celebrating and go shopping for baby clothes or something. Thursday is completely full as well with meetings and a Pictage Webinar I'm doing with like 200 people via telephone and WebEx. It's going to be fun but it's taking up like half of my day. So to make a long story longer... I'll be here late nights this week plugging away at emails and last minute loose ends. I'll be back tomorrow to announce the gender of our baby! Pray for a girl! No, pray for a boy! Ok, I guess you don't have to pray at all.. let's just see what God picked for us :)

Wow, 2 minutes to post this or I already go bad on my word! I better type fast!

So I just spent the evening here with my buddy Shyla going through some pics she took for me on a recent shoot and a funny story came up. I thought I'd share it so we could start the posting streak with something funny.

Shyla came by one night a couple weeks ago to meet up with me to go over some photos. I ended up getting caught in an important meeting and was running late. She has her own key so she let herself in to wait for me. It was about 8pm at night and the studio was completely dark (maybe not so settling for a young girl coming in alone). She flipped on a couple lights and sat down in a chair. She soon realized that she had to use the restroom so she went over, walked into the restroom, and flipped on the light. There are three switches, one for the main light, one for the fan, and one for the shower light. She turned on the shower light. Now there is a curtain covering the shower doors that is a bit sheer so anything dark shows through as a silhouette when you turn on the shower light and not the main bathroom light. My wetsuit just so happened to be hanging in the shower which looked like a man standing in the bathtub at first glance. From the sounds of it, it scared her pretty bad. Shoot.. that would have scared me too! haha!!

I hung up my wetsuit and flipped on the shower light to get a picture of what she saw.. check it out.. pretty creepy if you ask me ;)

I've been doing quite a bit of thinking about my blog and I want to make it better in so many ways. I want it to be useful, helpful, inspirational, positive, educational, conversational, uplifting, spiritual, fun, and most of all more consistent.

So from now on, I'm going to attempt to post something every weekday (Mon-Fri). Since I have very little spare time these days, I'm going to keep the posts short for the most part and many posts will be text only (It's hard to find an image every day that I want to show). I will mix it up with images and videos when possible to keep things diverse and interesting. I also will be focusing some attention on others (photographers, friends, mentors, family, etc.) when I am inspired by them or just want to give a shout out.

I want to thank all of you who have followed my blog this far. Your comments have been such an encouragement to me and have made me feel so blessed to have such great people in my life! Please continue to post comments. I enjoy reading them so much! All of your comments get sent right to my blackberry

I also want to apologize for not being more consistent with my posts and for taking weeks off at a time when I have been busy. I promise to make the adjustments in my schedule to keep this blog a priority.

God has blessed me with so many wonderful friends. Julie, Aidan and I thank you from the bottom of our hearts!

Until tomorrow, God bless you and keep you!
Mike

A couple of weeks ago I brought my buddies Ray and Anna out from Miami to help me with a wedding up in Thousand Oaks. They came out a day early and we went to the OC fair to do some people watching and eat junk food. Good times! Ray and Anna are the coolest couple you'll ever meet! Anna LOVES kids and Aidan just fell in love with her. The wedding went so well and we got so many amazing shots. I'll post some of those soon. I started a new portfolio piece for the wedding on my website and haven't quite finished it yet but there are a few shots there now. Here's Aidan and Uncle Ray being funny at the fair.

Here's one of Anna just to be fair :) She's going to kill me for putting this up!
I still can't believe how time flies and how big Aidan is now! He's 2 years and 4 months old now and he's talking so much. I love this age. I have a fear that I'm going to blink and he's going to be all grown up.

On Monday, I was at the Ritz Carlton in Dana Point shooting editorial for the Spring/Summer 2007 issue of Grace Ormonde Wedding Style. I had my hands full all day shooting some amazing tabletops, bouquets, and cakes. Special thanks to JD for modeling and Jasmine for helping out! You guys are the best! I also want to thank my publicist Rita Hermes and her assistant Jennifer for an amazing job of organizing and planning! I posted a few images below. Check out my website portfolio section or Jasmine's blog for more :)

So just to recap on the rules of the game... anyone who donated $25 or more to Thirst Relief International was entered into a drawing to win cool Epson and Tamrac prizes. Below are the results of the drawing!

And the winners are.....

Grand Prize: Jim Cook - Epson P4000

Second Prize: Nina Sutherland - Tamrac Travel Pack 71

Third Prize: Detrick Branston - Tamrac Velocity4 Micro Sling Pak
Fourth Prize: Fabio Monteiro - Tamrac MX-S5369 - Memory & Battery Management Wallet 8
Thank you to everyone who gave generously! For those that did not win a prize this time, your donation was not in vain! Together we raised enough money to save the lives of over 100 children! I want to give a special thanks to the folks over at Thirst Relief International for always using 100% of the money donated for the cause of providing pure water for those who need it most!

crazy days, crazy days... I will post the winners tonight for sure! I tried to get Aidan (the surprise guest) to cooperate and help me draw the winning names, but it became quite a chaotic situation. I guess two year olds are not cut out for raffle drawings. I might upload my attempts in an outtake reel to give you some laughs later. I'm off to a softball game, so I'll be back to post the winners :) Sorry to keep you waiting!

running a bit behind schedule... guest of honor is not cooperating... this may happen sometime this year so don't go away....

I will announce the winners of the Thirst Relief donation drawing tomorrow (Wednesday). I will have a special guest draw the names and I will broadcast it on my blog at noon PST.