It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas...

Happy holidays, everybody! As usual, December seems to be galloping by at breakneck speed!

Back on Sunday morning, Santa and Mrs. Claus rode through our neighborhood in style! They travelled at a much more leisurely pace. =)

It would've been more festive if the surrounding landscape was white, but for the sake of the horse and everybody's fingers, toes, and faces, we're glad the snow and ice held off.

Speaking of the white stuff, this was our area's weather forecast for Christmas week:

We were skeptical, but for once the meteorologists were right! The quiet greenness persisted through Wednesday, Dec 23. We went to bed to rain and wind and woke up to this on Christmas Eve morning!

Talk about perfect timing! It's been looking like a snow globe all day!

Timing hasn't been quite so perfect on HI3, not that I'm complaining. Our streak of finding lucky finds and high stat wilds seems to be over, and we've had no success finding any of the newly-introduced donkeys either. It's all good, though - we already have so many new horses that we're way behind in getting them their own saddle pad and polos and discovering their favorite treats. Maybe now with Christmas break stretching happily ahead, we'll finally get all caught up!

We haven't done anything that Christmas-y on the game, unless discovering ice castles counts?

...or shape shifting into a fawn?

Two of the wilds we've lassoed have had season-appropriate names, at least:

I think this pony we caught last night was a bit confused:

Some players, like these two, are going all out!

Wow, well done!

Finally, this has nothing to do with Christmas, but we did see our first whale this week, and at very close range!

This one seemed to like hanging out near and under our kayak! <3

Pizza Has Company

Happy December! While some places in the US have already been hit with major snow events, we have somehow been spared so far. The weather forecasters are predicting a slow start to our winter weather, which is nice right now but probably means we'll still be getting hammered come April. Fortunately, all of the Christmas decorations are making it feel more seasonal. It seems like more houses in our neighborhood are going big with lights, decorations, and inflatables this year than ever before, which we love! 

On HI3, some villages are putting up Christmas trees and/or changing the colors of the buildings to green and red. And while they're not specifically Christmas-y, sparkly crates that look a lot like presents can be found in caves now. Inside each crate is a surprise plushie. In addition to looking cute (and kind of ridiculous), a plushie gives a horse a unique magical stat boost. =) So, many players are now riding around with these little guys perched on their horses' rumps. 

We haven't explored caves much since plushies were introduced, but Blitzen and I did find PepsiSummer's first a while back!

It was an arctic fox! It seemed like a highly appropriate plushie for Blitzen, so she got to keep it!

Pepsi's leg... XD

HI3 has added some more living animals also, including elephants:

...and sea creatures:

I'm really eager to see a dolphin and a whale, but so far we've only come across sharks. Figures, right?

We've continued to lasso every wild equine we come across in our travels, of course. Back while it was still November, we found two other cool equines who are definitely worth mentioning.

"Sport" doesn't look much like your typical big, long-legged savanna wild...

...many things are long and awkward, but not the legs! XD

Her genetic stat total was unexpectedly impressive, but not so much her performance metrics.

It could've been fun to have her in the herd just because of how... unique she looks (I think the ears are my favorite part), but because of her underwhelming performance metrics and skittishness, we decided to pass.

Interesting story on our final November horse of note, "Chip." We just barely had time to lasso him last Sunday morning before we had to log off, so we didn't do the usual profile view and gaited-ness check. I confess that by the time I eventually logged in again that evening, I'd forgotten about him. I could've so easily sold him to the trader along with the other wilds we caught that morning, but luckily my memory was jogged in time.

 

This guy's genetic stat total sets a new record for us, 1055! (Just barely dethroning our reigning champion, the small but mighty Pizza, who has a genetic stat total of 1050.)

So sorry we took so long to realize how special you are, buddy! You will never be sold to the trader!

Since "Chip" seemed too generic to us, we have renamed him "Pringles." After all, he's the right color, and Pringles are pretty fancy as far as potato chips go, all neatly stacked in those tubes with the dapper Pringles dude printed on them.

I figured that our incredibly good fortune (3 lucky finds and our highest genetic stat wild ever) would run out as soon as November did, but no. Here is the very first wild we lassoed in December:

Sorry, Pizza, your total has been bested again! This time by a single stat point!

His performance metrics are not nearly so impressive, but they don't tank. Neither does his personality, thank goodness. Like Pringles, he is quite lazy but otherwise shouldn't give us much trouble under saddle. 

In case you were wondering, this guy's "tobiano" is limited to the spots you see on his legs and some tiny spots on the left side of his neck. It would have been cool if the spots were more extensive, of course, but I certainly prefer this to over-extensive white spotting. (How sad it would be if white covered up nearly all of his handsome, dappled mushroomness!)