Conor and Elizabeth are engaged!

Frank and I took a little trip to South Bend over the weekend after Lillian's bridal shower.

We were there for just one reason: celebrating the engagement of our dear friends Conor and Elizabeth!

We love these two. The story of how we became friends is a good one. Conor and Elizabeth were at Notre Dame when I was (although they're a year younger), but I never met either of them until the very last day of my senior year, when I went to Milkshake Mass at Dillon for the last time (if that means nothing to you, let me just say that the milkshakes come after Mass, not during. And Dillon is the guys' dorm that was across the quad from mine).

After Mass, I went to get a milkshake (of course) and ran into my friend Michael. He introduced me to Conor, who quickly revealed his impressive ability to impersonate a Spanish priest we both know and love. I was duly impressed and decided we had to be friends. When he moved to DC a year later, I introduced him to Frank, and a bromance was born. The two of them discovered they have almost everything in common, except for baseball and hockey allegiances (but that's a story for another time).

It wasn't long before Elizabeth joined the party in DC and we developed a love for going on double dates together ... although Elizabeth and I joke that getting Frank and Conor together is more like taking our kids out on a play date, because they have way too much fun together. :) For how important Conor and Elizabeth have become in our lives, it kind of blows my mind when I think about how close a call it was that Frank and I even met them at all. How lucky that I went to Milkshake Mass that day!

We were so honored that they invited us to celebrate their engagement, and we loved spending time with them and Conor's great family. The weekend was quite the adventure, including a rather dramatic hunt for a hotel room on Saturday night, because we foolishly didn't reserve in advance. Who would have thought that five different hotels in South Bend would be booked full up on a Saturday in July? But we finally found a room and got a funny story out of it too.

After dinner with Conor's family, we all headed over to a great Irish pub called Fiddler's Hearth...

... where Frank and Conor drank a looooooot of celebratory Scotch, and Elizabeth and I each had exactly one Irish Coffee.

The next day, we went to Mass at the Basilica, said hi to a few lovely friends who were at the 10 am Mass, and then walked down to where the proposal took place...

In front of the St. Joseph statue, in between St. Mary's and St. Joseph's lakes. I love this clever twist on the traditional campus proposal at the Grotto (which is just steps from this statue). Conor and Elizabeth have a special devotion to St. Joseph, so it was really perfect. And aren't they the most beautiful couple?

We're so happy and excited for these two, and our prayers will be with them as they prepare for marriage. I believe Conor occasionally reads my blog (right Conor?) so if you'd like to leave any advice or good wishes in the comments, I'll make sure they get back to him and Elizabeth. :)