A P2 Tradition

Last night we had our 6th annual P2 Christmas Party.

{P2 Trivia Fun Fact: While the traditional Christmas get-together didn't actually originate during P2, it is still referred to as a P2 function (confused? see THIS post).}

Over the years, our Christmas Party group has undergone a few changes, but this is what the very first P2 Christmas Party (referred to as the "Bowen Christmas Party" at the time) looked like:


Shanna would officially join our little group (the process was fairly rigorous, so it took a few months) not long after the first Christmas party. She made the cut in time for our next photo shoot as a group, Lyndsi's 2005 birthday party-- more affectionately known as "the night of the unfortunate picture." Now, I've lost track of the actual picture of all of us. BUT, I did come across a few other pics from that night, and I think they'll do just as well:


So the point that I'm getting to {surely I've got one, right?} is...
...Look how we've grown up! Presenting, P2 Christmas Party 2010:

A P2 Memory

Today I started thinking about a cake that my girlfriends and I used to make a lot in our early college days. And, as pregnant women (so I'm told) are prone to do, I decided that I must have some of that cake today. So I whipped one up and dug in. And then I started thinking about all the memories we made with this cake and decided that I should dedicate a blog post to it, just so I can share the good times :) First of all, here is the cake:

Pretty simple: yellow cake (from a mix), chocolate frosting (from the can), and pink sugar sprinkles (and, no, another color will not be the same). We named it "the P2 birthday cake" for our apartment-- Plymouth #2. These are the P2 ladies:

Now, a little about P2 and why simply making the P2 cake would trigger an entire blog post.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and boldly declare that P2 has probably been my favorite year of life-- not that I don't LOVE marriage. But you have to understand, in P2 there were no bills and money just magically appeared in my bank account! There was little to no stress EVER in my life that year. We didn't worry about boys and dating because we were all writing missionaries pretty devotedly. We didn't worry about weight because we could eat whatever we wanted and would burn the calories walking the million miles across campus and back. We all had shiny hair, clear complexions, and cute jeans. "Friends" was on the TV night and day. And an apartment of cute brothers were consistently at our beck and call when a male presence was deemed necessary. Seriously, it was like a dream world that I only wish every woman could experience.

We affectionately refer to those precious months (May 2005 - April 2006) simply as "during P2." For example, in a conversation I might say, "oh yeah, I've had this shirt forever. I bought it sometime during P2." We've had to deem that year as it's own era because the months just blurred together into one incoherent happy memory. I really couldn't separate spring from fall from winter from spring again if you asked me to. It was all just wonderful "P2."

Things we will never forget about P2:

*tetrus

*lockdown

*brothers

*mail time

*Shanna's strep throat ER trip

*the lyndsi/katie transition

*lucy/mary