Cutesy McFluffysnuggles

 It was Mom's birthday this past Thursday! She worked for most of her waking hours, like 11+, which was a bummer. In the fleeting time remaining, they managed to squeeze in a tasty takeout dinner and the present-opening, so at least the day ended on a fun note.

Oh, the suspense!

Mom's family sure is generous! What a haul!

A few explanations:

- Mom received a Hermione doll for Christmas. She put the rest of the Harry Potter collection on her wishlist, and this happened. =) At the time she made the list, Ginny was only available in a set with Hermione, hence the duplicate. (Hermione can literally be in 2 places at once, just like in book 3, ha ha.)

- The tiny eyes are to stick on little houseplants. More photos likely to come...

- The book's about Sable Island Horses and has some gorgeous photos.

- That gray thing in the back is a very wrinkled sun hat: it's advertised as being able to be packed very small and came that way. (Seems like a good idea for traveling, right?) Fingers crossed she'll be able to get the wrinkles out.

- "Loctite" is poster putty. Mom has a lot of posters attached this way in her room and the horse room, and it doesn't last forever...

- The new birds are an osprey and a puffin! (Puffins sound a bit like cows - who knew?!)

We didn't play horse games much on her big day: just lassoed a few wilds on HI3 - no standouts - and logged onto Star Stable only long enough to care for the horses. However, that YouTuber knew what she was talking about. The horse bazaar did begin this week, and 2 of the breeds she mentioned are currently discounted there: the Percheron and the Appaloosa.

We like the Percheron but have no particular affinity for the breed. If we were to get one, this would be my choice:

The Appaloosa is my favorite horse breed, for obvious reasons. I'd love our fourth horse to be one of these. 

Unfortunately, my sisters are not as on board. How is this possible? you might ask. Well, it's because Star Stable Appaloosas spend a lot of time looking like they're dozing while idle. They like chill horses, but they're not so wild about ones bordering on narcoleptic.

I even had a name picked out. *Sighs*

So... sadly, the plan is to keep waiting. Hopefully, the YouTuber is right about the remaining breeds that are also going to be part of this bazaar. If so, we may soon be jumping from 3 equines to 5!

I will leave you with some entertaining screenshots from our recent questing.

clogging a giant drain with hay...

... to purposely flood a cellar. 

(Turns out Scout cannot doggie paddle, but he has amazing lung capacity!)

Our first major encounter with Ms. Drake:

It's a shame Clara couldn't keep Cutesy McFluffysnuggles. =) Or read the book she worked so hard to retrieve for a kid NPC.

Later, Clara did get an interview with Ms. Drake. (Part of a larger plan to get info on what GED is up to and hopefully bring it down.)

...the third option, clearly!

Clara was eventually promoted to assistant and has passed along vital info to Herman, owner of Jorvik Stables. (Isn't the uniform great? XD)

Clara also attempted to solve the mystery of some thefts at Moorland Stables, which eventually led to this "Nasty Character." Unfortunately, this also involved her getting knocked out while entering a lighthouse, even while wearing her riding helmet, and Mrs. Holdsworth baking a dangerously spicy pie.

Mysteries continue to abound!

Yes, we do!

Hmm, any ideas?

Clara also helped solve the puzzling case of a missing horse. Not just any horse, but the Baroness's prized eventing horse, Butterfly. Butterfly got swapped with a very nervous look-alike they decided to call "Valiant." At the end of the storyline, Clara and Desertdash chased after the villains responsible for stealing Butterfly, one of whom was Valiant's abusive previous owner.

The car crashes, and the villains are pretty mad! Fortunately, Valiant comes to the rescue!

Aw! I wish it was an option to adopt Valiant! According to the story, he and Butterfly become good friends and get to live together at Silverglade, so I guess we'll be content with that.

And... drumroll... at long last, we got around to continuing the main quest line.

Off we raced to the castle with the Baroness's key!

Free at last!

At least they're not blowing Clara off anymore.

Finally, the latest cute side quest: Ydris the ringmaster was holding auditions. Multiple hopefuls had lined up.

Esben the Knabstrupper was not exactly an instant success, despite Ydris's boundless enthusiasm.

It all worked out in the end, though!

Maybe I should try to get my sisters to set our sights on a Knabstrupper eventually rather than an Appaloosa? They're pretty cool too!

Plum Prestige is Ours

We somehow made it through the spring festival and the first few days of May without purchasing a fourth equine or a second canine companion. Well, done, sisters! <3 I think it would have been much more difficult to resist had we not stumbled upon a YouTube video indicating that several breeds will soon be on a steep sale at some sort of bazaar. I do not know if their information is accurate, but Star Stable's news does indicate a bazaar is coming the third week of May, just in time for Mom's birthday...

Our daily participation in the festival, often past our bedtime, paid off. We ended up earning enough spring tokens to take home everything we wanted. We even had a few left over, which was awesome. 

This is the "plum prestige" dressage set. (Nice, whoever was in charge of naming this.) The coat was near the bottom of our want list, but we'll be set now if we ever want to be really fancy. Sadly, only Desertdash can wear the saddle pad, saddle, and bridle. We especially like the breeches and boots - they're going to get a lot of use.

This is the "blazing glory" set. Funny how the shade of yellow is similar to Clara's skin tone, and the shade of brown is quite close to Desertdash's coat. (Again, only he can wear the pad, saddle, and bridle.) We didn't realize tall patterned socks with short boots was a thing in the equestrian world, but it is on Star Stable, at any rate. You can't tell here, but Clara's gloves have little gold horseshoes on them that match the saddlebag. =)

Here is the premier pink set, minus the pink and red plaid saddle pad that doesn't fit any of our three equines. The bridle only fits Desertdash, but we will likely use the boots and saddle on Tigertin quite a bit. We don't care for the red pants with this ensemble, so you probably will never see them paired in a screenshot again, ha ha.

Here are Clara and Frostflight in full Bulldogz gear. (Sorry about the bows, buddy.) From what we've gathered, the Bulldogz are the Bobcats' rival riding group, but we haven't actually met them yet in the storyline. This stuff could come in handy on St. Patrick's day, if nothing else.

And finally, here are Clara and Tigertin sporting full Bobcats gear. I think Tigertin likes it, even if is a lot going on with her stripes.

I wanted to spend all of the Jorvik shillings we made during the festival on stockpiling hay. It's pricy (takes at least 2 regular activities to fund feeding a single horse each day), it never goes bad, and it's going to go more and more quickly the more horses we add. We did spend some on hay, but my sisters really liked some of the only-around-for-the-festival gear for sale. I didn't have the heart to fight them on it when they were being so good about resisting more horses and pups. So, now we have matching emerald and sapphire saddle blankets, leg wraps, and saddle bags. 

Here's the sapphire version. The pads fit the other equines too, though they don't look as nice because they don't go down as far down their barrels.

Here are some fond looks back on our last few days on the red string trail.

Hello, sheep!

enjoying a picnic with an NPC

enjoying another glitchy picnic by ourselves

aww, baby fox!

a dark, rainy ride

We will kind of miss bringing the wandering animals back to the petting booth. Partway through, though, the cows and sheep got glitchy and would no longer move more than a few feet before getting stuck. Then, as we'd ride around the area, we'd keep getting distracting messages that "it looks like the animal went back where I found it." Annoying.

the mini donkeys were my favorites

We will miss the payouts from the daily races and dressage trials too, but it is a relief not to feel obligated to cram these activities into our week nights anymore. It's an even bigger relief not to have so much incentive to join the global competitions - we do not have the skills or the practice for them to be enjoyable. We're always just happy when we make it through. (Not a given: we got disqualified once for getting lost and taking too long, then got disqualified a different time for accidentally going through a checkpoint the wrong direction.)

We were super proud of ourselves for managing a 5th place once last weekend: our new personal best with a large group

We also gave each other major high fives when we finally completed the quest line for the festival. The first part involved stealing a box of fireworks and then sneaking past a ridiculously numerous, close-packed group of GED guards while we were on horseback with the box. It was no picnic. Even worse was racing back to Alex and Linda with said box while being pursued by Sabine on her insanely fast horse Khaan. We lost count of how many attempts that took before we finally succeeded!

All but one firework fell out of the box on this whirlwind ride. We gathered them up, but then Sabine arrived and nabbed them after insulting us all (even called Desertdash a "bus," as I recall), intending to set them off and freak out the horses at the festival.

Fortunately, Alex thwarted her plans.

The festival carried on. We faithfully visited every day, until the bitter end. Desertdash was our mount that last evening.

Goodbye, fancy levading Lippizaner NPC's

Goodbye, Jorvik festival grounds

Goodbye, Moorland festival grounds

The next day, sure enough, poof! Gone without a trace.

We'd never been to the Jorvik Stable grounds before the festival - it sure looks different now!

We've had so much more time to quest this past weekend! We'll probably share some highlights in our next post, so stay tuned!