The Egyptian Arabian (and a close call)

Happy almost Easter! Felicity's birthday falls on the big day this year! This hasn't happened since 1957 and won't happen again until 2030, so enjoy it, sis!

The weather has switched back to spring this weekend after a (hopefully final?) dump of snow last weekend. Flowers are starting to come up, the grass is getting green, and buds are popping up on the trees! Felicity may actually be able to wear the newest addition to our collective wardrobe tomorrow for our Easter egg hunt:

Mom got it for us for free from the American Girl website thanks to a $10 off offer they sent! (We've had our eyes on this tee for a while, and it was exactly $10. Fate.)

HI2 has introduced a new horse breed to the game, the Egyptian Arabian! While I like their HI2 artwork quite a bit, the horses don't seem nearly as elegant as the Morab or the Shagya Arabian. If it wasn't for the dished faces, I'm not sure I'd have known just looking at them that they were supposed to be Arabians. But, like I said, I still really like them! I'd love to have one in the herd someday.

Here are some examples from the BBB:

chocolate sorrel

dapple rose grey

fleabitten grey

(Those are some big flecks! These guys almost look like leopard appys!)

red grey particolor

red silver

seal brown particolor

silver brown

As you may have noticed from the examples, the Egyptian Arab has quite pleasing marking options for its dished face. Here they are closer up:

none

star

snip

stripe

The above 3 can happen in various combinations with each other.

blaze

The blaze seems to happen only by itself - I've never seen the star in combination with it.

particolor option 1

particolor option 2

These two obviously only happen on horses with the particolor coats and appear to occur on top of whatever other regular facial markings they may have.

And now for the close call I mentioned in the title. Bethany almost struck again this afternoon when she was clicking through the adoptable horses in the livery. She noticed 4 very nice stallions there waiting to be adopted.

Stallion #1: 

This bay Alter Real with picture-perfect markings and dapples is +5/6 and +60. He may rival my Volante in terms of handsomeness, but Volante has far superior stats. Bethany passed him by without too much difficulty. He was gone when I checked later - hopefully adopted?

Stallion #2:

Sleek, black, and placid, this noble stallion definitely deserved Bethany's admiration. Don't tell Odette that Bethany passed over this guy too. He was also gone - presumably adopted - when I checked back an hour or so later.

Stallion #3:

Julie's favorite of the bunch is this short but mighty RHD with a smattering of adorable bird catcher spots. He has 6/6 stats, but they add up to a not-that-impressive +52. He is currently still available for adoption. *Sighs* If we'd caught him ourselves we'd have kept him, no question. But sorry, Julie, we can't go adopting every nice 6/6er in the livery we see. We already have two great RHD's and several great seal browns.

Stallion #4:

Bethany nearly impulse-adopted this gorgeous golden TWH. Easy to see why, right? Other than being rather antisocial, what's not to like? If he'd had just one more measly stat point, he'd have made our +80 cutoff for instantly adopting a livery horse. After discussing amongst ourselves, we were almost ready to adopt this guy anyway and put either Mr. Devoted Disciple or Sandstorm up for sale. It must've been M.D.D. and Sandstorm's lucky day, because by then the TWH had been snatched up by somebody else. Good luck to you, big guy! <3