Our story is like any other. Met at a Whole Foods bar where Ellie was working and Brandon was neck-deep in his Obstetrics homework for nursing school. Never wanting to break the cardinal rule of not hitting on the bartender, Brandon remained painfully oblivious to Ellie's advances...for way...way too long. By the end of the night, and way too many hints from Ellie, Brandon worked up the courage to (rather sheepishly) ask for Ellie's number only to find out that Ellie would be moving to New Zealand indefinitely in 8 days. What started with the understanding of hanging out and remaining casual turned into something a bit more...international. Within weeks of her moving, Brandon was on an impromptu flight to Auckland, with a backpack and two surfboards in tow. After only 3 dates in Hawaii, Ellie and Brandon figured it was a win-win to spend the next 3 weeks traveling in a camper van throughout New Zealand with either a new love interest or maybe just a really great travel/surfing companion...needless to say, it didn't end up being the latter. After a flawless 3 week adventure, traveling in a van much too small for someone thats 6'5, we agreed to keep in touch and keep it light. If it's meant to work, it'll work. That was December 2019. We ended up talking everyday, often throughout our entire day until Ellie had a family reunion planned in March of 2020. Well, we all know what happened in March 2020.. cue quarantine. Brandon graciously offered to take care of Ellie’s 92 year old grandma back in California so that he could spend a little more time getting to know this new love interest. What was supposed to be “2 weeks to flatten the curve” turned in to 3 months of living with his future in laws. It was the first time he’d ever met them. Fast forward a bit, Brandon received an offer to attend a nursing residency in North Carolina. We shipped Brandon’s 1984 VW Westfalia to Seattle and started a 5 week cross country road trip to move ourselves to North Carolina. During the year that we lived in North Carolina, we decided to fulfill our lifelong dream of building out a newer, more reliable campervan, in hopes of living and traveling out of it for the foreseeable future. And we did just that. Our van adventures took us from NC, to FL, VT, NH, TN, CO, WA, OR, CA, ID, MT mainly, but we sure explored along the way too. Brandon travel nursing gigs took us all across the country with the flexibility to travel and explore the surrounding areas, and we’re both forever grateful for that. We even were lucky enough to sneak in an international trip to Iceland (which had been on Ellie’s bucket list since she was 12) for our 3 year anniversary. Us being us, we rented ANOTHER camper van to explore the vast, beautiful, and magical country. On of of the last days in Iceland, we took a tour to view some of Iceland’s glacial systems, one of them being big enough we could go inside and explore. The light shone through the meters of ice creating a crystal blue oasis, like nothing you’ve ever seen before. When we got to the main cave, there was a perfect sky light in the glacier, open to the sky above, letting the sun shine in like a spotlight inside the cave. Below there was a perfect platform with an icy background. Brandon got down on one knee and…didn’t actually pop the question. We were both so nervous and so stupidly happily in love that we couldn’t get any words out. He pulled out the ring and we both started laughing and crying. Ellie shook her head and that’s all we needed.