Beautiful girls

I love Hannah and Lizzie with my whole heart and then some. I love them because they are funny and silly and sassy. I love them for their faults and their strengths. But really I love them just a little bit more because they indulge my interest in photography. Hannah's pageant is in three weeks, and in our quest to come home with a round crown we are participating in the cover girl contest. For that we had to sell ads (thank you family, for purchasing them!) and then I had to make ads with Hannah's picture on them. Those pictures will be judged and if one of the pictures is loved best by the judges, Hannah gets to have her picture on the cover of the program book at the pageant AND win the cover girl sash and ROUND CROWN.

Which is a very long way of saying that we needed photos. Which gave me a chance to get out the camera and see what we could come up with. Then because I didn't want to leave Lizzie out (and because she indulges her mother) I did a photo shoot with her, too.
So here are the photos. I posted most of these on facebook, but there are a couple extra here ... just for my loyal blog readers!
This first picture is her official head shot photo for the pageant::

I got this shot by having her jump on my little trampoline:

Taking advantage of a little breeze and her (mom made!) curls:

Hannah hates this picture and I love it. I love that she looks kissed by the sunlight and I've seen this trying not to laugh face about a million times:

Getting a serious look out of her is not as easy as you'd think, but we got one:

Out back sitting on the wood pile (where the swingset used to be...):

I think this is my favorite picture because her smile is so natural:

Sassy girl:

And now for Lizzie ... she won't win anything for these photos (no pageant for her) except my undying gratitude that she let me take them:

This is Lizzie's photo from the trampoline -- pure joy!

Lizzie sitting on a different wood pile. She has such a great, natural smile:

 And here she is showing a little sass, herself.

Here she is in front of the tree. It is VERY hard for her to give me a straight face in a photo since she's smiling all the time (in her pessimistic way, of course!):

 I love this picture of her, even though she looks like she's 25. I took it when she was holding her face up to the sun at the end of our photo shoot: