I had only seen Noah around campus two or three times before I decided that I needed to be friends with him. After realizing we shared a class and exchanging numbers, Noah slowly became one of those friends I could count on to always put a smile on my face. We had a lot of mutual friends and as college went on, our friendship grew through bonfires, birthday parties, and running into each other basically every day around GCU's campus. Our friendship throughout college was characterized by sunrise hikes, late night study sessions and dozens of random little adventures. After countless friendship dates, Noah finally asked me on an official date in November of 2020. 30% of me thought it was the best idea ever, and 70% of me thought we were for sure going to ruin our friendship. So we went on the date, and 70% of me changed my mind because I realized that night that there was so much more to my fun, spontaneous friend than I could have ever imagined. :)

To be quite honest, I don’t remember the exact time I met Andi. She kind of just appeared in my life one day in Fundamentals of Design Class freshman year and we shared the same friend group. I acquired her number one day using the old “let’s work on homework together” trick (her contact on my phone still says Fundamentals of Design for Company). Turns out, I didn’t really need her number, we somehow managed to always run into each other on GCU’s campus and that’s how many of our random adventures began. Andi was a wild one, the only person crazy enough to say yes to any adventure. Maybe that’s what drew me to her, that and she had a car which I was lacking. From 3am sunrise hikes, to late night gymnastics open gym nights, and spontaneous 3 hr drives down to Tucson for no reason, Andi said yes to it all. Anything with Andi was an adventure and so our friendship grew. Fast forward to junior year when my HUGE crush on Andi blossomed. She met my parents and sister for the first time because she was Ashlyn’s Bible study leader. Our adventures continued and so did the mounds of homework. Some of my favorite memories with Andi were those late night study sessions. We would stay up till 2am in classrooms jamming to music, playing games on the white board, and cramming lessons before a microeconomic test the next day. I don’t remember studying that much though, I mean, how could I with the most beautiful, adventurous, fun girl distracting me? These study “dates” were super fun, but also stressful times that grew our relationship all the more. The summer before our senior year Andi and I went on what I would call our most perfect non-date date. Andi texted me out of nowhere on a warm summer's day, “what are you doing tomorrow and would I be down for an adventure?” Keep in mind we were still “just friends.” I had nothing going on and she told me to grab my swimsuit and meet her at 1pm. She drove us to Lake Pleasant and we took her parents' jet skis out. That is we took out one of the jet skis, just as we were hopping on Andi accidentally threw one set of keys into the water. This meant we had to share a jet ski, which I wasn’t mad about. Despite all the things that went wrong, it made for a great day that I will always look back and think it was our first non-date date.

As summer turned into Autumn, I fell for Andi all the more but was too dumb and nervous to do anything about it. We had been “just friends” for 3 years at this point and I didn’t want to ruin anything. Then I had an epiphany; I like this amazing girl and can’t see my life without her but she doesn’t know how I feel and we’re about to graduate and go our separate ways. I had to give it a shot and “profess my love for her” aka just ask her out on an actual date. One night we were studying at her apartment and before I left I popped the question, “would you like to go on an official date with me?” To which she responded, “sure, I guess.” The pursuit was on and I had to impress the most beautiful girl. With the help of friends and my sister I planned our first official date of a sunset picnic on South Mountain complete with martinelli's and homemade cookies. The date went great, despite some awkward moments and sketchy gas stations. After the date, Andi took some time to decide if this relationship would really work because she didn’t want to ruin our friendship. We decided to take it one date at a time which lasted from November to December 2020. On New Years Eve, driving back from Flagstaff, I pulled over to the side of the road to watch hot air balloons fly over the sunset and I asked Andi if she would be my girlfriend. She said yes and our adventures together continued, not only as best friends, but now as boyfriend and girlfriend. Some of my favorite adventures together were driving to the Grand Canyon in the middle of the night, going to Sedona, Flagstaff, Coronado, and Albuquerque for the biggest hot air balloon festival. And I guess you can say the rest is history…

I have never been more surprised than I was the day that Noah proposed. Noah told me we were going to go on a little sunrise adventure as a celebration for my graduation. I had no idea that...

I had always wanted to propose in a hot air balloon because I love them so much. It was May 2021 when I started to get things ready for the proposal. I knew I wanted it to be around Christmas time when our families were in town and Andi would be graduating from nursing school. I called a hot air balloon place, bought the ring, everything seemed to be ready. A few days before the proposal I had to switch the date of the flight due to Andi taking her nursing exam and bad weather. Finally the proposal day came and we woke up at three in the morning to go on another surprise sunrise adventure! We drove to Gold Canyon, AZ and took a flight in our first hot air balloon ride. It was amazingly magical, despite me being super nervous I would drop the ring. Andi told me afterwards she could feel my heart beating so fast, but she thought I was just afraid of heights. The moment came when we reached the peak of our journey at 6000 feet. I got down on one knee (or as much as I could in that tiny basket) and said, “ I wanna take our relationship to new heights. Andromeda Leigh Dumaplin, will you marry me?!” To which she squealed, “YES” and “thank you so much.” When we landed, friends and family had chased down the balloon and welcomed us. It was one of the best days that we will always remember. Now we look forward to adventuring together forever…