We're locking it down.

We met in the summer of 2013 when we were both on staff at Level 2 of WASC Leadership Camp. WASC Camp has played a huge part in both of our lives for over a decade. Ryan was a first-year JC, and Lizzy was the Lead JC. Ryan remembers the outfit Lizzy was wearing on the first day. Lizzy remembers Ryan's SMART goal from that year. At the dance at the end of the week, we invented a dance together called the "Fish Stick," which looks as stupid as it sounds. And then we screamed all of the HEEEYYYYY's in Hey Soul Sister by Train. That was when Lizzy knew she had a crush. Nothing happened. Ryan moved to Arizona. In the summer of 2014, we were on staff together again. Lizzy helped Ryan make his door decorations, and she very low-key not-weird-at-all stopped in his room to play games with the kids a little more than was necessary. Ryan went back to Arizona, again.

After a few months of *texting* and a couple glasses of wine, Lizzy told Ryan "I have a camp crush on you." Ryan felt the same way. This was obviously complicated, because Lizzy lived in Madison, WI, and Ryan lived in Mesa, AZ. That's 2,000 miles, people!!!! We talked about how dumb all of this was for a couple weeks, until we decided we'd rather be "together" more than anything else. There was this whole thing with a guy wearing a lampshade but whatever. We started dating at midnight across time zones on September 14, because of course. It's what normal people do. Ryan flew to Madison on October 10 for our first "date," first kiss, and first Badger game. Lizzy's friends bought her a plane ticket for her birthday to go to Arizona for the first time. It was all pretty cool and dumb, but mostly cool. Then Lizzy studied abroad in Ireland for a few months, we did an awesome AZ-to-WI road trip, Ryan lived in Madison, Ryan studied abroad in England, we paid a lot of money for a lot of trips over 3 years. Shout out to the friends and family who drove us to the airport, picked us up from the airport, and put up with all our shit. It was difficult and not always fun and for sure not easy, but it was always worth it. In July 2017, Lizzy moved to Phoenix, so we could finally be in the same place. We have a too-small apartment and play trivia on Mondays, we have the sassiest cat, Pickle and sweetest dog, Guinness. Ryan has a whole lot of dumb knowledge so he makes a great trivia partner and Lizzy, well, she's there.

We did our ring shopping together! Ryan really wanted a sapphire, as it's the traditional wedding stone (don't ask about the diamond-industrial complex). But he said "it's your finger!" so we looked together and found one we both really loved. We went to shop and got it sized on April 20, 2019. We had been planning a vacation for our 5th anniversary in September, and both of us were secretly planning our proposals and getting very nervous. When we got the ring, Ryan said, "that was expensive, you should wear it now, I don't want it collecting dust!" And so Lizzy said "ok but you have to ask me first!" And so, in the car in the parking lot of Jared the Galleria of Jewelry in Paradise Valley, Arizona, Ryan said "this is it" and he asked Lizzy to marry him. She said yes and got to wear her sparkly-ass ring. It was perfect. Plus, the 50th anniversary of our engagement will be 4/20/69. Nice.