A Lost Pharaoh

Well, it's official. *Cues Christmas music.* Our tree is up, Mom's Christmasy stuffed animals have come out of hibernation, and the outdoor Christmas lights are out shining away under a light dusting of snow. The Christmas season sure puts a positive spin on the chilly, dark days of late fall/early winter. 

HI3 helps year-round as well, of course. We've had some extra time to play this long weekend and have been thoroughly enjoying our explorations south of our ranch. (Except for the 20+ minutes spent paddling a kayak on open ocean. That was rather dull, aside from the occasional whale and shark.)

Mom did end up gifting us generously with store-bought mobia so that we could continue to grow our immortal herd. Most players would probably use it to buy a membership and get all the perks that come along with that. It probably would make way more sense, but instead we plan to spend ours entirely on infinitum amulets. 

As you probably guessed, we did get to keep all three of those mares Lily posted about. Liona was actually the trigger on the mobia purchase, because she was noticeably getting grayer. They have permanent names at long last!

Banana Split is now Chiquita. I see bright yellow saddle pad and polos in her future. Solveig might give up hers (in shade "finger banana") and try something new.

The other two are anticlimactic: their auto-generated names just ended up sticking.

Topazes, as it turns out, can be blue, so Topaz it is.

Liona was too pretty to change. 

For the record, here is what she looked like upon capture:

And what she will always look like now, frozen in time almost a year later:

It's not a dramatic difference, but still, we wish we'd had an infinitum amulet on hand earlier to preserve the rosier shade. Oh well, you are still lovely, Liona.

Despite much lassoing yesterday, we did not find any black horses on Black Friday. Such a shame. Maybe next year.

We did, however, find another gray pinto while out on a mail run.

Isn't this guy at a gorgeous stage in his graying process? You can't tell here, but he also has handsome blue eyes.

Even though Pharaoh's genetic stats aren't impressive, he's speedy and has a pretty good personality. He's also a Grade Trotter, which would be a first for our herd...

It's super tempting to keep him as our Mr. November...

His herd hopes might have been dashed by this silver pony. We lassoed Class Clown later the same day on a small island we happened upon in our southern travels.

Cute, high genetic stats... it's not looking good, Pharaoh.

Everything looked okay until you get to his second to last personality trait: he's just ornery enough to buck. If he'd been great in other areas, we might possibly have overlooked it, but nothing really stands out.

Sorry, Class Clown. *Sighs.* Pepsi's rather large for him anyway. 

Part of the reason we were especially not keen on adding another ornery horse to the herd: we got bucked off twice yesterday by Tide (24% ornery). At least we can whistle now to get her to walk over to us post-launch. This was not possible after launch #2, however: Pepsi landed on top of a trader building.

At least it was a nice view

For such a small equine, she has impressive bucking abilities!

Hello, Pinto Mares

Even though the leaves were slow to change this year (the colors are just peaking now), Michigan knows it's November. The first snowflakes of the year flew here this week, and Mom experienced her first icy drive of the season. Mom's sweaters are happy to be back in her closet. Our favorite AG sweater (red with polar bears) has been making its rounds already too. =)

We had a slow start in finding cool wilds in October, but by Halloween, three mares were all vying for spots in the herd.

The first showed up three days after my birthday, on October 18.

She's cute, but I confess this one did not get my vote. 

Bethany and Julie are her biggest fans. They love her coloring, that luxurious two-tone mane, and her winning personality. Pepsi looks rather huge on her, but we've seen way worse, ha ha.

That spot by her withers is the only non-leg pinto spotting she has.

The next one made her appearance on October 23.

My sisters all loved this one from first sight. She's one of those rare wild horses (I think Showtunes is the only other one?) who may get to stay based on beauty alone. 

As lovely as she is, she did not get my vote either.

Also lassoed on October 23, mare #3 hails from the stone forest. 

Even though I'm not that into ponies, she's my favorite of the three. I think she's quietly pretty in a chunky stock horse kind of way, and she has the turning and sprinting ability to match. It would also be cool to have a stone forest representative in the herd, because up until now the only ones we've kept from there are not native - they've been "lost" lucky finds.

Depending on how November goes, and if Mom decides to fund some infinitum amulets, we'll see who in this spotted trio gets to stay. My guess is all of them, because have you met my sisters? 

In addition to all that excitement, there was an HI3 update this week that has given Pepsi the ability to let whatever horse she has out temporarily "run free." So much time spent watching our horses run around our ranch and play in our lavender pool...

Each horse also has a randomly-assigned mystery affinity now. It can be discovered by letting your horse search for its affinity in various locations. We found out Windfall's, Cloudburst's, and Gryffindor's quite quickly. 

Amusingly, skittish Windfall led us straight to a tiger - turns out she loves critters. 

Cloudburst made a beeline for floating rainforest essence. That's my boy, so practical! 

When we released Gryffindor to search, it was hilarious because he ran around super erratically, his graphics jerking like crazy. We thought maybe it was the uneven rainforest terrain or that something was glitching (maybe it was?), but eventually he ran up to Pepsi and the "affinity found" message popped up. Turns out he loves people! =) 

Our first horse, Starfleet, is still a mystery. Whatever her affinity is, it's not found anywhere we've been so far.