Staying Cool and Cozy

John Hudson, 11

 “My girlfriend got me a sweatshirt for my birthday. A couple of weeks before she’d had me try it on secretly to see if it would fit so I was like, ‘Oh, I know that sweatshirt.’ It was pretty cool.”

Lovely Jewelry

Jay Jarvis, 11

“I received a necklace for my birthday this year from my boyfriend, Andrew. It’s really meaningful because he hand picked it out for me and made sure I liked it. [He was also] talking to all my friends about it, trying to figure out if it was something I would like. It’s amazing.”

Bumping these Beats 

Mack Gallentine, 10

Why: “For my birthday, my best friend got me a necklace in seventh grade. People [always tell me] my identifier is the headphones that I wear all the time, so she went out and got me a necklace with a headphone charm on it. I still wear it almost every day. I really appreciated and liked it — we’ve been besties since we met, so it meant a lot.”

Slaying and Playing .. Flute

Salem Ponnuru, 12

Why: “it’s my senior year [in band] and I’m a section leader for the flutes. Before our last competition, my section got together to make photo books of our entire season. They gave us stuff from inside jokes, like I got a shirt that had an inside joke on it, they also got a stuffed animal that was like a mascot of our section. — It meant a lot to me because being a section leader is difficult, there’s a balance between being friends and having to lead and be strict sometimes. Knowing that they really appreciated and wanted to show their appreciation for me meant a lot.”