After months of “no time to blog,” I’m  finally making it back online.  More on what kept me away later, but this afternoon I’ve been blessed by a good friend hosting a movie date with the twins.  So I have a whole 2 hours to myself!  (Thanks, Jocie!)

And this afternoon’s break just happens to coincide with our completing the last step of our 2nd annual Home Study Update.  That’s right, we’re now rounding out our 3rd year of this adoption process with El Salvador.  Still no decision one way or another from our most-top-of-mind Central American country, but that doesn’t mean we get to let our paperwork lapse here in the States.

I wrote last year about the process and paperwork involved in completing a Home Study Update here in Maryland.  This year, though, we had the added pleasure of needing to re-do our home Sanitation and Fire Safety Inspection in addition to the rest of the updates.

I requested ours 7 weeks ago tomorrow.  Today was the first available date.

So this morning, promptly at 9 a.m., a very nice man named Merle – who bore an uncanny resemblance to Ron Howard, so I have the theme tune whistle from The Andy Griffith Show stuck in my head, thanks Merle – scrutinized our house from top to bottom.  Just in case we’d decided to let it go to pot in the last two years.

We hadn’t.

Though I will admit that the boys’ bathroom does smell a little like a New York subway station, thanks to some aiming issues we’re still working out.

We passed.

And $600 from now, we’ll have our report all freshly dated.  Again.  Just in case THIS 12-month season is the one in which we’re matched with someone(s) in El Salvador who need(s) an increasingly-Spanish-speaking-and-Latin-American-culture-immersed U.S. family.

The boys still pray just about every day for their “brothers and sisters in El Salvador.”  (The “limit-two” clause in our immigration approval doesn’t phase ‘em from asking for more.)

“Lord, please let this be the year.  Amen.”