Marriage Monday: 8 years ago.

Tony and I got married at the Rock Island County Courthouse on a Friday morning eight years ago.

We didn't tell any friends or family we were planning to do this... mostly because we were in the middle of planning our wedding that would happen in less than a year. We "got married on paper" so that I could have his health insurance because I was going through some minor health stuff back then.  It was a very quick exchange of words mostly read unfeelingly to us by a judge. It felt really surreal.

Tony and I came up in the digital age and didn't realize these types of things were printed in the local paper regularly. Which is something my Gramma reads every day, apparently. So you can imagine my surprise when my Gramma asked when we were planning to tell her we got married!

So while I will always consider May 20th our anniversary and the day we got married... August 20th is a funny little special day I like to remember every year, too. Because it's the day I became a Duggan.

Marriage Monday: Success In Marriage

When I was in high school I found a lot of comfort in reading the words of other people. I started my own quote book and I filled it with the most meaningful quotes and lyrics I came across. Reading it now is pretty hilarious... there are a few gems that still stand but most of it is so dramatic. However, I had a Reader's Digest book of Quotable Quotes that I would pour over and often times mark my favorites. I haven't cracked open this book in quite some time but I came across it on my bookshelf and pulled it out. I read through several pages the other day and marked ones that stuck out to me and among them was this one...


Almost no one is foolish enough to imagine that he automatically deserves great success in any field of activity; yet almost everyone believes that he automatically deserves success in marriage.

 --Sydney J. Harris

Let that sink in. To be successful in just about any career it takes major prep work. Sometimes it's going to school for several years and other times it's investing in a several week-long training course. It includes studying and practice and help from your coworkers. Over time you solicit advice from leaders in the industry and people who have been there before you. In your spare time you sometimes read articles to become more efficient, more comfortable and to be better at what you do.

YET. When it comes to marriage we are surprised when it doesn't work out magically and perfectly on our own. We're frustrated and assume something is deeply wrong with our marriage, ourselves, and our spouses when we find that ours must be the only marriage that takes work. I mean... how embarrassing to reach out to another married couple for advice? That would only make you look weak and incompetent, right?

No. Way. Marriage is just as hard as everything else. I mean, being a human is HARD. It really is. So being a human alongside someone else being a human should understandably be double hard. (And it is.) But we don't see it that way. For some reason, just like the quote says, almost everyone believes that success within a marriage should be automatic.

I don't have any special method of success to share with you. Just came to share the quote and to acknowledge that you aren't alone in the struggle of being a human alongside someone else being a human. Marriage is so wonderful. Being married to my husband is such a huge blessing and something I thank God for all the time. And it is something that requires all the investment that a career should... like going to school for several years on the subject, several weeks of training, continued studying and practice, help from others, advice from leaders in the industry and people who have been there before you, reading articles to become more efficient & more comfortable & to become better at your marriage/job. (And it's too bad we aren't incentivized to do all these things for our marriage the way we often are for our job.) Because how to properly love someone and build a life alongside them is not knowledge we are programmed with at birth. It doesn't make you a failure to get help for your marriage, it just makes you resourceful and is an investment into your marriage - something you'd like to keep nice and shiny your entire life.

*also I totally acknowledge that marriage isn't in the cards for all people nor is marriage to the same person for life. Sometimes the BEST & most healthy thing for two people is to end their marriage and I am 110% supportive of these things.*

Chores {Marriage Monday}

In an attempt to put off some housework I should currently be doing I'll instead write a blog post about chores...

Before we had kids and we had unlimited time to talk about our relationships, my sister and I had a conversation about duties around the house. Do you split them up evenly? Do you share the tasks? Do you have set, specific chores you do regularly? Or do you switch them up?

My sister was of the mindset that if her and her husband switched up the tasks and didn't assign specific chores to "his or hers" then they wouldn't get burnt out on them. Which is a good idea in theory. But was about six years and three kids ago. And I'm pretty sure they have designated chores these days. 

For the most part we have our assigned chores around here. He takes out the trash. {Reason #15 I love my husband: He takes out our yucky trash for me!} I do the dishes. He's supposed to be in charge of the laundry. (I loathe the laundry.) Which mostly means he will put them in the washer & dryer & then once they're clean they sit in a basket for the longest time. To be fair - we have way too many clothes. It makes me want to throw them away and live minimally - just have capsule, versatile wardrobes. I really think that if we had a more functional laundry room that I would enjoy the task a little more. I do the cooking. He mows the lawn. I do the grocery shopping. We both do bedtime for the kids. (Or is that not supposed to be considered a chore...) 

It just makes me wonder what it's like in other households. Do you guys switch up the housework or is it usually done by the same person each week? Or is it more like our house and you just put off all the chores until you absolutely have to do them?

Tony once fell asleep while in the middle of reading his anniversary card from me. That's talent. But this is what we would all rather be doing instead of doing chores. Sleeping.

Tony & Ali 5-ever

Five years ago today Tony and I were still reeling from one of the biggest days of our life.

When people talk about the happiest day of their lives they often mention the birth of their children... which I am always a little envious when they truly feel that way. That day is always so intertwined with pain and struggle and exhaustion for me. I always think about our wedding day when the topic of "best day ever" comes up. I felt so much joy and peace on that day, it was amazing. Things went wrong but all negative feelings just bounced right off of me. I had a hundred reasons to be anxious but I was excited and truly happy. My dad was missing from such a huge day of my life and I expected to feel especially empty but instead of that I felt loved and cherished by everyone present. I loved everything about marrying Tony and would do it again every year if I could. We had such a fun time with our friends and family that night! And then we headed off to Walt Disney World in all our wedded bliss.

And since then life has been amazing and absolutely crazy. We were surprised not even two months after our wedding to find out we were expecting and that began an entirely new chapter of our lives. Or really, it would just completely change life as we knew it.

It truly has not stopped or slowed down since. We came home from our honeymoon to our apartment in Silvis which we would end up moving from in the next coming months to the tiny Moline house. That's the house we brought baby Presley home to... the house we became a family in! We stayed there for around two years when we up and moved back to Memphis and lived with friends until we found our home. The Duggan family expanded just after buying our home and we brought Molly home here in 2014 not long after our third anniversary. Life here since then has been crazy and beautiful and full of laughs and tears.

Here we are, five years post-wedding, and we're staring the reality of becoming a family of five directly in the face. Never in a million years did I envision this exact life for us all those years ago. I hoped and dreamed and always thought of what could be, but the reality is so much better. Maybe not every moment of every day... because that crap is hard! (Especially parenting a strong willed child!) But the challenges certainly causes you to grow in the best ways.

One goal for this next year of marriage is to finally use our fondue pot. Yes... this is a serious goal. I'd like to get rid of so much of the unnecessary crap in our life - both the physical stuff as well as the baggage you can't touch.

Dear Lord,
Continue to help us protect our hearts, our love, our marriage, our family
Guide us down the path You have set for us and to put each other first along the way
Teach us how to react with kindness and patience and understanding to each other and those around us and how to grow from the experience when we get it wrong
Thank you for granting courage and grace and mercy in the face of personal adversity 
Help us to remember that as beautiful as looking back is, to live in the now and to always look forward to the future You hold for us
I look forward to the surprises of year six of our marriage and finding ways to make it even better than the last
Thank you for sending me a partner for the ride, please help me to love him the way You love us.

Remember we used to dance

And everyone wanted to be

you and me

I want to be too

Expectations.

I'm not sure what I expected for my life. But I swear it's all so unexpected.

You're young and you have so much love to give. You look for love and you find someone. You fall in love, hard. Your engaged and your planning this beautiful, fun, exciting wedding and the goal is to say "I do." You expect to love this person and for love to be enough. I mean, you can't imagine ever not loving this person. You can't imagine this person ever not loving you. So what is there to worry about? And then you are married and you realize love is so much but it's not everything. You realize marriage is not easy. Worth it, amazing, and a journey - but anything but easy.

When you enter the work force you have all these ideas about how important it is to love your job and to be fulfilled by it but that isn't always how it turns out. Maybe you go into it knowing it's just a paycheck but you're surprised by how much you enjoy your job.

You own a house and you have major expectations there - but your already spinning so many plates by this time that maybe you don't meet your own expectations here yet. Or maybe that is one of the plates you keep spinning.

Let's say you become a parent. You expect good days and bad days but you have no idea what all of it feels like until your in the middle of it all. And on the bad days you might think how unexpected your feelings are. You know what it feels like to love someone but you have no way to expect just how powerful the love you feel for you kids is. You have no way to know that the love you receive from them will feel as great as it does until you experience it.

Anyways, life is a big bowl of CRAZY. You set these expectations for yourself and your loved ones and your lives - whether you do so consciously or not - and sometimes they're met and exceeded but sometimes we fall short. Life ends up being not what we expected.

After finding out we were pregnant with Presley, I was shocked. Because that was one thing I didn't expect and didn't see coming. I don't think I got up off the toilet for several minutes after peeing on the pregnancy test. I sat and sat. I tried to absorb what this meant for us and tried to envision what in the world this meant for our future. After having Presley and PPD and a multitude of confusing feelings, I knew we were done having kids. Somewhere along the way we changed our minds and started to look forward to the idea of another child. And then we got pregnant and no matter how much we thought we wanted it - once that positive pops up on the test there is no going back. Enter freak out mode again. (I think I have commitment issues...)

After we brought Molly home and there were lots of scary sleepless nights and I turned to Tony and begged him to make a pact that we were not going to have any more kids because being so sleep deprived was terrifying!!! No doubt about it, we both agreed we were done. And yet again our hearts and minds were changed over time.

And we're having another baby!

Is this real life? Molly and Baby Duggan 3.0 will be about 27 months apart (while Presley and Molly are 28 months apart). All over again we are excited and nervous and worried and grateful. We've been around the block a time or two but never as a parent of THREE.... so while this isn't completely uncharted territory it still feels like a new hurdle. It's comforting having my sister just a few steps ahead of me here - she just had her third in December. I'm excited to go through all the changes right next to my family. Presley is so happy and can't wait to know if it's a boy or girl.

Anyways... expectations. Did I ever see this for myself - married with a third child on the way? Perhaps. But those were back in the days when I had no frame of reference. I had no idea how hard real life was. And don't let anyone have you pretending that life isn't hard. No matter your situation - married or single, parent or not, working or staying home.... sometimes it's just hard getting out of bed and putting on a happy face. (Like Mondays.) But it's all amazing. It's great. It is so different from the life we probably would have mapped out for ourselves. 

Marriage Monday: Dare to Share

Happy Monday!


Raise your hand if you love being in love. Now... think about why you love being in love. What reason did you come up with?

For me, a really great part of falling in love is being pursued. I don't know about you, but when my husband wants to know me more - even after fifteen years of each other - it makes me feel cherished. But because our lives are so rushed it's really easy to let that deeper communication that we all desire go by the wayside. In addition to that, it's easy for things to go unsaid/unheard. We have so many feelings for our spouse and often we assume the other knows/absorbs those things. It'd be nice if we all took the time to get those feelings for each other out as well as take them in from our spouse. Because life is short and our marriage is important!

me and tony on our most recent date night

This is where Dare2Share comes into our picture. Dare2Share focuses on communication and intimacy and gives you an opportunity to enjoy the love you share with your spouse in the form of a game. It was created originally by a woman, Esre, for her and her husband to use as they spent much of their time physically apart. Esre didn't want their marriage to suffer and decided to purposefully set aside time to talk to one another free of distraction. Dare2Share started as a physical card game and is also offered as a very user-friendly app.
(You can get the app via iTunes or Google Play and is offered in four different versions - English, Afrikaans, Espanol, and Portugues for $4.99.)

The app contains 230 communication cards and has between four and six questions per card. We've just started answering questions and they start out as simple as sharing about your day - elaborating on the high and lows of the day as well as looking forward to tomorrow. And according to their website, the questions progress as you move along.

"The cards are in a specific sequence and the questions are progressively intense and more sensitive! It is therefore suggested that patience be displayed and the sequence be followed, in order not to jeopardize the series! Romantic suggestions and ideas in the form of 'Dare' cards have been included in order to keep the game exciting and to enable couples to enjoy humor and have fun the way that we believe God intended it to be!"

It doesn't matter how long you've been with your significant other or the state of your marriage, EVERY one benefits when you put your marriage first. You can take time to answer these questions together on a daily or weekly basis but the important thing is to stick with it. The key is to make a quiet time that is kid and distraction free to focus on each other. Make eye contact. Share some coffee. Make it special! Listen to your spouse and try not to interrupt. It might be a little awkward at first or feel forced but I promise you'll fall into rhythm.

as much as I love our occasional date nights out, I love our evenings in together even more!

In what ways do you and your spouse work to keep your marriage alive? What is something you'd like to start doing in order to promote deeper communication between the two of you? And what is your favorite part of being in love in the first place? Because I really want to know!

And let me know what you think of Dare2Share! I think it's amazing and I wanted to share how much I love it with you guys today!

God's Promises.

Today's point of praise: "This is my comfort in my affliction, that your word has revived me." (Psalm 119:50) Day #9

Let's talk about marriage for a second. How many times have been distraught in a tough situation until our spouse offered us their words of comfort and encouragement? Where would we be without mutual communication in our marriages? It would really suck.

This is what I thought about today after reading my devotional: communication. We are able to communicate with God through prayer and he is able to indirectly communicate back to us through his promises in the Bible. If we aren't praying or reading the bible then our communication with God is hurting, as I'm sure we've all experienced at some point. And when we read the bible, we read it through our own individual lens - our experiences give the words personal meaning and weight. And who gives us those experiences? God - through his plan for us. I think that is awesome.

My sister, Amanda, and I always talk about how hard mornings are in our houses full of little ones. It seems like no matter what time I wake up in the morning, there hasn't been enough sleep. Amanda and I both wait until the kids are awake in the morning to get up and out of bed ... which is probably a big mistake. We've both talked about how we probably should start to get up a bit before they do in order to have actually warm coffee and time to ourselves for reflection. It sounds like such a great idea until just after putting the kids to bed. I bask in the kid-free evenings and often stay up late watching Grey's Anatomy reruns on Netflix. (I'm a night owl.) If you watch the Bachelor on ABC, you might remember the best bachelor ever - Shawn - and his adorable family, which includes his sister, Shay. I love her blog! She wrote on this topic once and her early morning routine has always sounded so peaceful to me. (Here is an example of why I love the idea of her morning routine.) I'd love to wake up and start the day with coffee and some motivation and blessed encouragement. The mornings that I do start the day thanking God - regardless of what time I get up - really does set my mind in a more positive direction.

To go back to talking about marriage again, it always makes my morning SO MUCH better when I wake up to a good morning text from Tony - and the best when I get to wake up and have a conversation with him. It'd be a nice feeling to do the same (but not exactly) with Christ - to wake up and reflect on his word.

"We have ample evidence that the Lord is able to guide. The promises cover every imaginable situation. All we need to do is to take the hand he stretches out." Elizabeth Elliot

Four Years of Marriage

It really, really doesn't seem like all that long since our wedding day. Even more unbelievable is all that has happened in our lives since then! It's funny to think that our life would slow down after I finished college and wedding planning was over. Jokes on me! Life has been in overdrive since then and we've changed so so many things. Last names, addresses, states, jobs, family size, cars, and went from rent to a mortgage. Here's a quick glimpse of the last year of our marriage....


May 2014

June 2014

July 2014

August 2014 

September 2014

October 2014

November 2014

December 2014

January 2015

February 2015

March 2015

April 2015

May 2015

Year four was a crazy, busy one! The ride wasn't always easy this last year but I absolutely love where it's lead us. One of my favorite reflections to hold onto right now is: We're not perfect people (and we don't live in a perfect world)... but why should that keep us from being happy? (Does anyone else out there find these little mantras that stick with you and help pull you along sometimes?) Life is seriously too short to dwell on and live in the negative.

It's so easy to make the focus of a marriage your children!!! So easy. Mostly because children require lots and lots of love and attention. And also because they're so darn cute and you love them so much! We're striving to remember to keep our relationship a strong, central part of our family unit. My mother-in-law coming to watch the kids to allow us a date night has been a lifesaver for that as well.

Of course we also expanded our family this last year of marriage so that was exciting, too! I worried for so long about how that would affect our family and now I can't imagine our life any other way.

I think it's important to remember that you are responsible in helping to create the marriage you would like to have. And it takes work to get there, that's for sure!

There is no one I'd rather be married to and in the end that is what I love about being married. Tony is who I want to spend my life right next to and I'm very incredibly blessed to be able to do just that.

March 20th.

Today is the first day of Spring -- FINALLY.  Despite my allergies, I have a deep love for this season.  Spring is known for new life and gives me so much hope for the beauty to come.

But March 20th means much more to me... it's the day that Tony and I made it official and exclusive twelve years ago.  (Though, honestly, we might as well have made it official two years earlier if it wasn't for me being so stubborn!)  I can't say I know any different than the life I've lived, but it has been an amazing experience growing up next to the person you love.  We've seen each other through a little bit of everything... personal hardship, injuries, loss, failure.  And we've been there through new lives joining us, weddings, graduations, new jobs, big moves.  Not to mention our own wedding, pregnancies, child births, and newborn phases.  We've lived in countless houses, one apartment, and purchased our own home. 

And if you would have asked me twelve years ago whether I would be with Tony for the rest of my life, I would have told you yes.  But of course, don't we all believe that at the time?  Especially our first true love?  Our journey was anything but conventional.  We went through all kinds of bumps over those years and I can't count the number of times I've wished I could go back to what I now refer to as my "lost years" and do things differently... but the truth is, I can't.  And all the things in our past truly do make us the people we are today.  I do know that through the most difficult part of my life that he was the glue that held me together, the gravity that kept me planted, and he was the bright and shiny light when I needed to see.  He was my friend through everything and at a time when it seemed like there was no hope for a future with us, he was steadfast that we would find a way.

We knew one another as carefree kids on the soccer fields, awkward adolescents on the way to prom, almost-adults-but-not-quite struggling to find our way, and now as parents to our own beautiful children. 

I'm so thankful that Tony kept asking me to be his girlfriend until I was ready.  I'm so thankful to be married to someone who I love so much.  I'm so thankful for all the stepping stones that lead us to where we are.  I'm thankful for his surprise visits to the Quad Cities from Memphis when we lived 500+ miles apart.  And I'm thankful to have him next to me through life - then and now.

So while this anniversary gets trumped by our wedding anniversary these days, it's a breath of fresh air to think back on where we were so many years ago.  It fills me with so much awe & appreciation to remember the beautiful, unadulterated love we had for each other and where it all began.