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!