One Short of a Dozen

 I am grieving at this point the reality that our 12th child, Brooke, will probably never legally be a member of our family. The red tape issues with her adoption do not look hopeful as Ethiopia struggles to process even the "easy" adoption cases. While I am leery of teenager adoptions for very good reasons, we really believe that she would have integrated well into our family. The sad part is how desperately she hoped to join Bella and have a family of her own. At this point, our only option is to see how we can move forward helping her in Ethiopia. 

I'm not supposed to show pictures of children that we are in the midst of adopting, but that isn't even our case, so I want to show everyone a picture of Brooke. She is featured with another little girl, Hannah, that is also STUCK and un-adoptable due to some laws in Ethiopia that desperately need to be changed. 

I would have adopted Hannah long ago also if it were possible - we fell in love with her our first trip to Ethiopia in June of 2012. She was 6 and Brooke was 12 - now they are 8 and 14! Wasted years that they could have lived in our family!
 

Brooke and Hannah