Firework.

I always wanted a sister.
I have vivid memories of being a little girl, begging my mom to have another baby, but only if it was a girl. (I didn't quite realize at the time that parent's don't get to choose...). Growing up with two big brothers, I desperately wanted a sisterly companion. Little Women was one of my favorite books, and I would vicariously live my life through those characters (as I did most books I read as a kid), wishing that I at least had one sister to play with. I remember always feeling jealous of my friend's who had sisters, and I'll admit, even as I grew older and entered adult hood there has always been a twinge of envy when I see friends with their sisters and the close bond that they have. I think I always assumed that a sister meant having a built in best friend, and while I know that's not the truth in all cases, it definitely is true in most that I've seen. But that wasn't the Lord's plan for my life, and I'm more than okay with that. I was given two wonderful, artistic, somewhat insane but great older brothers who I'm very thankful for. I just wasn't meant to have a sister.
Biologically, that is. 
The first time Josh brought me home to meet his family, I was pretty nervous. Meeting the parents is an intimidating thing no matter what, but that wasn't what most worried me. I generally get a long with people, and was excited to meet the people Josh loved most...but I was really nervous about meeting Rachel. Josh had described Rachel to me as "the light of his life", and truly is his favorite person in the world. I was so nervous, knowing that I was about to meet his sister, and one of the most important people to him. But the Lord is so good. I was silly to be so nervous. I think I like the way that Josh puts it best:
Rachel is the best picture of unconditional love that I have seen on this earth.
She is the most joyful, loving, genuine person that I have ever met. From day one, Rachel displayed love and kindness in such an open way. It really doesn't matter who you are or what you do, Rachel just loves you. She is hilarious and has one of the best laughs you'll ever hear. She is imaginative, creative, and quirky in her own Rachel way. Rachel has Charge Syndrome
and because of it is partially deaf and blind. She uses sign language and my goodness, that girl is patient. She is a wonderful teacher and between her and Josh I'm slowly learning how to sign. She has probably had to tell me 500 times what the sign is for "name", but she never acts frustrated with me (even though I get frustrated with myself). She has 5 kiddos, (4 Teletubbies and a doll named Christine) and she is their mother, doctor, teacher, and fellow rockstar. She loves Harry Potter as much as Josh and I do, and she is just an incredibly joyful girl. I never would have imagined all those times I prayed for and dreamed of having a sister, the Lord would put Rachel in my life. When I say she is unconditional love, I mean that sincerely. She is such a beautiful reminder that if a human being could love us so well, how much more perfectly does our Heavenly Father love us. Makes you think, right?
One of my favorite things to do is watch Rachel sign and sing to her favorite songs, and one of these is "Firework", by Katy Perry. I've never been a Katy Perry fan, but now when I hear this song, I admit I turn it up. This may sound cheesy, but Rachel is totally a firework. She is bright, colorful, and big. Not big in physical stature, she's pretty tiny actually. But big in the sense that her personality and heart are huge. She genuinely lights up the room and her joy is infectious so everyone around her feels joyful, too. For example, when the wedding ceremony was over and our pastor announced as Mr. and Mrs. Allen, Rachel was so excited that she rushed the stage. Not out of any motive except her genuine joy and happiness and pure excitement. It was one of our favorite moments of the entire day. We are so blessed to have Rachel in our lives, especially me. I love getting to call Rachel my new sister and am excited about the relationship we are building.
So happy birthday, Rachel.
We love you more than you will ever know.

Honeymooners.

To say that our honeymoon was perfect
would be an understatement. And I don't mean perfect in the "everything went off without a hitch, flawless, total and complete bliss" kind of perfect. I mean in the Allen's kind of perfect. (It's similar to how perfect our wedding was...if you missed out on that spiel, check the first blog post). But I think both of us would agree that what made the trip even more special was once again seeing how many phenomenal people we are blessed to have in our lives.
The day after the wedding we drove to Dallas where a very dear friend had gotten us the hook up to stay at The Joule downtown. Such a cool hotel. We got up early Sunday morning to go exploring downtown and eat breakfast before we caught our flight.
Side note to all you future honeymooners :
Don't book the flight for your honeymoon the day after the wedding. We LOVED having a day in between to just rest, pack, and process the events of the wedding day. We still got out of town but gave ourselves time to recoup a little before embarking on the chaos of catching a flight. There was no stress or pressure, just good quality time. Also, Sunday flights are way cheaper than Friday or Saturday. Just FYI.
Need Title.
You should know that finding the sublime honeymoon spot for the two of us was a bit of a challenge. Not the worst, but we definitely had to think hard about where we would go that both of us would enjoy. You see, Josh is a bit of a playaholic. By this I mean the man LOVES to be active, whether it's playing basketball, climbing, hiking, running, surfing, long-boarding, playing soccer, playing water polo, jet skiing, wake boarding, snow boarding...it never ends. And the great thing is that I love doing the majority of these things as well (notice I didn't say "all". The day I shoot a basketball is the day you can expect the rapture), however none of those things are my definition of a vacation. To me, there is a difference between a "trip" and a "vacation". If we're going on a trip, we can be as active as we want and fill as many adventures into a small amount of time as possible. But if I'm going on a vacation, well that's a different story entirely. I want to do nothing but relax, and if that means laying next to a body of water reading a book in the sunshine for 3-6 hours a day then so be it. So you can see where our dilemma arrives. Josh wanted to go to Colorado or Washington and hike all over the dang mountains until our feet fell off. I wanted to go to Mexico and have a little man bring me Pina Coladas while I re-read the Hunger Games and come dangerously close to getting skin cancer. (Obviously joking...we all know I would have read Harry Potter.) So where do we find Compromise?
Florida.
The perfect blend of action and rest. We spent the first 4 days at a condo in Orlando and had the time of our lives. We did 3 theme parks in 2 days, being Sea World, Disney's Hollywood Studios, and Universal's Islands of Adventure (Harry Potter World, to be specific). We had an incredible time sharing so many hilarious and fun memories and really got to emphasize the whole "best friends" part of marriage. (Especially at Harry Potter World. Heaven on earth to a couple of nerds like us.) Two of our favorite things from the Orlando portion (besides Harry Potter), would be
1) the night we ate at The California Grille.
I had eaten there my senior year of high school on our choir trip and ever since had dreamed about how delicious the food was. I'm not exaggerating people, I have literally dreamed about this food. The steak literally melts in your mouth. Literally. Plus it's on the top floor of Disney's Contemporary Resort with a view right over Cinderella's Castle at Magic Kingdom. Towards the end of the night the whole restaurant goes out on the balcony to watch the Magic Kingdom's fireworks show and it's...well, it's just magical. (It's really the only word that fits.) Easily a highlight of the trip.
2) the night Josh surprised me with tickets to Cirque du Soleils' La Nouba. He had been telling me since about June when we were at Kamp that he was looking into a surprise for the honeymoon, and finally on our last day in Orlando he pulled out the tickets. I had never seen a Cirque show but had heard great things, and let me tell you people, they did not disappoint. It was easily the most mesmerizing, beautiful show I've ever seen, and I've seen Wicked on Broadway. But Cirque had it beat. At one point, a woman did a hand stand on a man's head while he walked 50 feet in the air across a tight rope. That's all I'm sayin. We were both awestruck by the whole show and count it as our favorite part of the whole honeymoon.

On Friday, we headed for New Smyrna. We were incredibly blessed to have friends with a condo on the beach (and we mean right on the beach) that they let us stay in for the weekend. We had an incredible view of the ocean and the condo itself was beautiful. When we first arrived we went on a long walk on the beach (how very honeymoon of us...) and just enjoyed each other's company. The next morning we went for a good run, but by the time we had cleaned up and were in our swimsuits Hurricane Isaac had decided to visit. Definitely not the real storm but enough rain to keep us inside for the rest of the weekend. Some of you may think that this was disappointing, but in actuality it was perfect. The rain was the only thing that could really force Josh to rest. Even if we'd been on the beach he would have been surfing or boogie boarding or running, but being inside gave him the chance to just take naps and watch movies and let his body have a little bit of a break after 3 months of hard work at kamp and a crazy wedding week. It was really a blessing and the perfect way to end our trip.

The flight back was nothing terribly interesting, with the exception of a delayed flight and some rain-soaked luggage, but we were glad to get back to College Station and start the real life part of marriage. We started classes the next day (not the most fun transition, but oh well) and Josh jumped straight into working while I started up the job search. We've been unpacking our sweet little house (more on that later...) and are loving our new life together. I haven't uploaded any honeymoon pictures yet, but here's another wedding picture just because they're beautiful and I love them.
Happy Monday!

Here We Are.

Blogs are great.
I've always been a big fan of blogs. It's such a convenient way to keep up with people that you usually don't see or only get to catch up with briefly. With blogs, you can hear all (or at least quite a bit) about a person's life and still feel connected. Some may think they're too impersonal, but not me. I think they can be as personal or impersonal as you want them to be. And hey, they're efficient as heck, and we Allen's are all about efficiency! (Okay...one of us is all about efficiency. The other is learning how to be more efficient. Rome wasn't built in a day, alright?) But seriously, it's such a great way to know that you're updating multiple people at once instead of having the same conversations over and over again. Not that it's a bad thing to have these conversations in person, but it does make it easier to get to deeper matters and have more intentional (yes, intentional, the most over used word in the American Christian language, but sometimes it's the only word that fits) conversations with a good friend without having to catch up on the basics.
So here we are.
A blog on the lives of Josh and Chandler Allen. We both have friends all over the nation (and some parts of the world), and wanted to be able to give you a peek into our life together. I'm not an avid blogger and am still learning the basic's of "the how-to's" in the blogging world, so bear with me as we get this thing started up. More than anything this is just going to be a little insight into the things we're doing, where we're going, and what we're learning.

How to put this briefly...
An attempt at a quick update on the last couple of months. (Key word: Attempt.)
We spent the 3 months before our wedding working at K7 again. Yes, we might have been crazy. But neither of us would change that time for the world. You'll probably notice that I use the word sanctifying a lot, and that's because as believer's we go through daily sanctification, so be prepared, it's a common term around the Allen house. All that to say, our time at K7 before the wedding was probably the best sanctification we could have gone through before entering into marriage. Learning how to balance full time jobs, ministry, and a soon-to-be marriage was rough to say the least. But it brought us both to our knees every day, and the somewhat-bitter-but-oh-so-sweet realization that relationships are nothing without Jesus was exactly what we needed. We could not be more thankful for our time at Kamp.
And then...the wedding.
I hope every girl's wedding is as wonderful for her as mine was for me. It was so beautifully imperfect (the cake almost fell over and in the madness of set up we forgot forks) and we wouldn't have dreamed it to be any other way. The imperfection of the day made it absolutely perfect. Josh and I are not extravagant, lavish, "have it all together" type people, and so the little bumps in the road through out the day made it even more "us". But the greatest part of the whole day was that when it was all over, we had just made a covenant with our Lord to do this thing for His glory, and we had so many incredible people around us as we made that promise. We were both overwhelmed by how loyal and loving our friends were to us during that time, and made us so appreciative of the relationships that God has blessed us with to challenge and sharpen us throughout the years.
And then...we danced.
And boy did we. I have never had so much fun at a party or event in my entire life. We absolutely tore up that dance floor for a good couple of hours. It was the best celebration and I'll never forget it.

So there's a brief (not too shabby, right?) update on this summer. I'll post more about school, jobs (or lack thereof...prayer please!), our house, church, and other fun shenanigans later. But for now, I leave you with one of our favorite pictures from the wedding day. It truly captures the joy and celebration that filled the atmosphere.