A Belated Birthday Present

This past Wednesday was Mom's birthday! We actually got the HI2 birthday message on the right day this year, rather than it coming a day late! Maybe the trick is to log on in the late afternoon rather than the morning?

Our buddy Gem happened to be on when we were, riding her new strawberry roan New Forest Pony. Her avatar isn't quite as strawberry as I was expecting, but boy is she cute! I think Xanthos was impressed as well. ;^)

Also cute is Pepsi's birthday present from Gem, a wobbly-legged fawn. Gem's Exmoor, Vita, has one just like him, so now the twins Dasani and Vita have twin companions as well. <3

It only seemed right to flute the birthday horse while riding Napoleon, the lucky 6/6 Welsh Pony we found on Mom's birthday two years ago.

The flute brought us a bay Hanoverian! Lily (who loves Hanos and still doesn't have one) didn't get her hopes up too much - she figured another 6/6 wild on Mom's birthday was never going to happen. Well, it turns out she was right about this year, anyway.

Drat, just look at those gorgeous markings! And it would've been so entertaining to have a horse strutting around our ranch isle like royalty. XD

I guess HI2 didn't want us feeling too bummed out, because two days later it decided to grant us our second 6/6 wild horse of 2016.

Was it...

A. a brown Don
(HI2 has been quite generous to us with Dons in the past, after all...)

B. a black Welsh Cob
(because obviously you can never have too many solid black horses
- just ask Shady, December, Onyx, and Windy)

or 

C. a flaxen chestnut Haflinger
(we don't have one of those, and it could only be a matter of time...)

The

answer

is:

B! 

Of course, it would be another stallion. The pendulum sure has swung back in the stallion direction for us. He is quite handsome, though! I love his stripe and that one white foot. It looks like Napoleon and Landslide are getting more Welsh company!

Carnations, New Horses, and a Strawberry Surprise

Sheesh, count on Julie to get me all misty-eyed over an old laptop! 

Let's move on to happy, HI2-related topics.

First order of business: check out this wild ASH that Julie and Tinsel fluted on Friday the 13th!

A booty bouquet. Oops! XD

Second order of business: let me officially introduce you to Usko, Yonder, and Yellowstone. 

Usko

Bethany has claimed him. "Usko" was the most fun name she could come up with that made it through the filter and started with the letter U. A goofy name for a goofy horse. =) That lead rope still looks odd to me, but whatever. At least it's a nice color.

Yonder

Kaimanawas are feral horses from New Zealand. New Zealand makes us think of picturesque mountainous terrain "way out yonder." The name seemed perfect for this rock-colored horse.

Yellowstone

She's a Westphalian, and even though the breed is from western Germany, we were more in a western United States frame of mind when we chose her name. I suppose she's technically more gold than yellow, but we decided it was close enough. Julie and I are still working out which of us will get Yonder and which of us will get Yellowstone. It's a tough decision!

I was not wild about adding two horses in March (Usko and Lumos) and another two in April (Yonder and Yellowstone), but my sisters were insistent. At least we haven't found any tempting horses yet in May, and we're almost half way through it already. 

My third and final order of business is this strawberry roan New Forest Pony:

Our buddy Gem and I were both online for a while on Wednesday night. Gem spotted a Camargue mare that looked like a female version of Mistral (and Murphy), so I rode Stromboli over to an auction house for a look. While I was there, Gem also pointed out a 6/6 NFP mare with 70 some minutes left in the auction. Gem made the first bid on her of a mere $1000 and said that she thought she would die laughing if she won. 

Well, I found out yesterday... 



Unlike Carl, luckily, Gem is still very much alive. But wow, come on now, really? A beautiful 6/6 +87 mare. $1000. I'm still shaking my head and snickering over this one. 

I happened to notice that there is another 6/6 strawberry roan NFP mare in the ranch stores right now. She's set for sale at $100,000, and she's only +60. Not to mention she's missing the cute facial markings and the interesting persona of Gem's mare.

Hats off to you, Gem!

Goodbye, Old Friend

Thursday, May 12 was a sad day for Mom. She went up to her bedroom, got out Carl, and discovered that Carl is dead.

This is Carl:

Yes, Mom named her laptop. Carl the Compaq and Mom go way back. He's been in the family since roughly June of 2006, which means he didn't quite make it to 10 years old. Once upon a time, he made surfing the internet, watching DVD's, and photo manipulation a breeze. A few years later there was the glass of water incident, which he miraculously survived. A few years after that he got a virus, but after a repair and some new antivirus software, he carried on valiantly. In his later years, he steadily declined until he could no longer do much but Microsoft Word. Mom, however, still found him useful to type her stories on from the privacy of her room, where he would warm her legs and whir away happily.

Carl had gotten to the point where turning him on and opening a document became a huge, 20 minute minimum ordeal, hence he spent most of his time in hibernation mode. One of the last things she'd see before going to bed every night was his little red light blinking. It was on Thursday evening when - for the first time - Carl would not wake up from hibernation. His screen remained a bleak dark gray. Mom tried to wake him by turning him on and off repeatedly, but it seems he is in a deep coma from which there is no return.

 Rest in peace, Carl. You will be missed. <3