Robin Howe, 11blows out her candles to celebrate her seventeenth birthday. “It’s so nice to be surrounded by friends and family that care about me on my birthday,” Howe said. photo by Kristen Edelman

help counsel middle school students with lead-ership skills and other fun activities. Outdoor Ed took place at Camp Kitaki. con-tributed by Kailyn Tauber

practices basketball in his free time on the weekend. “I put a lot of time and effort into this sport be-cause to me, ball is life, ” Clay said. photo by Leigha Little

have a photoshoot for their Instagram page at the Harvey Oaks park trail. “We take pictures every other two weeks to have enough photos for Insta-gram,” Cortez said. photo by Kristen Edelman

MN students David Clay, 09 Britney Cortez and Gabby Krause, 09

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<<Material Madness: Senior Hailey Clark and Katie Gaul rummage through the racks at the Flying Worm in the Old Market. “Their clothes are unique and adorable, it fits perfectly into my wardrobe,” Clark said. Photo by Justin Deffenbacher

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<<Goofy Glasses: Seniors Olivia Makos and Rachel Rogers spend the day at Oakview Mall. “I love hanging out at the mall because it is a place where I can hang loose,” Makos said. <<High Score: Junior Kaori Terada prepares to play an arcade game at CoCoKeys. Other arcade games helped her with getting more spending tickets. <<Cupcake Kings: Seniors Sean Doyle and Ben Janecek decorate cupcakes. “Decorating cupcakes with Doyle was the best experience of my life,” Janacek said. <<Apples: Sophomores Emily Gilson and Faith Engle play a few rounds of ‘Apples to Apples’ at an event with friends. “I will never be too old for that game,” Gilson said. photos by Laura Ney and Kristen Edelman

Letting Loose

Cos-Play Comeback Elaborate clothing, fancy makeup, and realistic wigs. The transforma-tion into a different person takes ef-fort and skill. A new person is pres-ent and their appearance changes to emulate a fictional character. Groups of friends gather and wel-come each others’ company, play-ing the role of someone different. Junior Mackenzie Summers takes part in an interesting activity on the weekend. She participates in cos-play. Cos-play is where groups of people dress up as one of the char-acters from anime, comics, movies, or TV shows and act out scenes. “Basically, if you’re a fan and

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want to take it to another level, then you join cos-play,” Summers said. Fans go to conventions to reen-act their favorite comic or anime scenes, and have a good time.Summers likes to act out characters from Homestuck, or from one of her favorite anime TV shows. Summers even visited the Anime Iowa conven-tion and has become quite knowl-edgeable on certain characters. “I learn most of what I know from listening to my friends talk about it all the time,” Summers said. Her friends are also interested in cos-play and were partly why she joined.With the help of her friend, Summers

was persuaded to try out cos-play. “I never thought I’d have the guts to do it, so my friend got me to start,” Summers said. After try-ing it, Summers has met many new people and found a passion. By being in cos-play, Summers’ weekends are full of excitement. Summers’ friend, junior Emily Theis also does cos-play. Theis is just one of the many people Summers has met through cos-play. They occa-sionally get together on the week-ends and get into costume. It’s always more fun with friends. Sum-mers’ newfound passion brings memories that can be shared forever.

By Leigha Little

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<<S’morin: Seniors Jacob Humber and Bryant Holt sit and warm up at a bonfire over the weekend at a friend’s birthday party.“Bryant was telling me about how his friend stuck marshmal-lows all over his face one time so he dared me to do it, and I won’t turn down a challenge, so I had to try it,” Humber said. Photo by Lyndsay Schroeder