In December of 2017, Alex and Amanda just so happened to both be in Minot. Alex was out embracing an Ugly Sweater Pub Crawl at a local bar, where Amanda was back for Christmas break and meeting up with friends. The dance floor was crowded when all of a sudden the boisterous music turned slow, and Amanda's friend Sam pushed her to find a guy to dance with. Amanda gave a look around, not knowing what to do when Sam pointed right at Alex asking, "That one, do you like that one?," Amanda nodded her head and Sam took over, dancing Amanda up to Alex. Alex, being the polite gentleman that he is, mistook himself for being in the way, and tried to ease out of their path. Realizing he didn't get the point, Sam took Alex's hand and placed it around Amanda. The rest is history...

On the evening of October 16th, Amanda and Alex were in their apartment when Amanda suggested they go out and play some Pokémon Go. Alex agreed, suggesting they try downtown. Amanda was hesitant, thinking, "That's odd he wants to go all the way downtown, but..it does have the majority of Pokéstops, so sure." As the evening went on and it got darker and colder outside. Amanda became more hesitant about leaving the warm apartment, but Alex kept pushing to go and Amanda finally gave in. Before they left though, Alex said he was going to go take a shower quick. Amanda thought, "That's odd...he doesn't usually shower at night." Alex came out of the shower dressed up in a nice button down and jeans, and was reaching to grab his hair gel when Amanda, sitting cozily in her PJs questioned him "Why are you doing your hair?" Alex claimed he got some new product, and wanted to try it out. Amanda thought, "That's odd," but blamed it again on his usual oddities and didn't think much else of it. Eventually they got downtown and found a parking space. But immediately after stepping out of the car, Alex claimed his best friend was down by the river taking pictures of the flooding with his drone, and they should go say hi. Frustrated that they hadn't even caught any Pokemon yet, which was the reason they were there, Amanda delayed this. But Alex's continued pushing eventually led them down by river. It was a beautiful evening with the sunset dancing off the water, and Alex's friends offered to take some pictures of Amanda and Alex. Now, over the past few months, Amanda had constantly been messing with Alex. Whenever she felt they were having "a moment," she jokingly would ask, "Are you going to propose?!" Well, as they were taking the pictures, she had that "moment" feeling again and she did her usual, "Are you going to propose?!" A minute later, Alex called her bluff.