Fabulous Fall

We've been enjoying unusually great fall weather here in the Mitten this year: above average temps and an exceptionally sunny October. Even now that it's November and we're back to it getting dark ridiculously early, Mom's been able to take walks outside in the evenings without bundling up for an arctic expedition. When fall is like this, I can see why it's Lily's favorite!

Lily has been in such a good mood, we'd probably have been able to talk her into taking home a horse #13 on Halloween. We didn't go there, though, don't worry. 

Halloween night itself was exceptionally windy but dry and relatively warm (50's, as I recall), so our house saw an above average number of trick-or-treaters. We watched them come and go from Mom's bedroom window. Was this creepy? Maybe, but we were stealthy. All anybody who happened to look up could see were Mom's cute stuffed dogs closest to the window, ha ha. Best costume prize goes to the boy dressed as a Hufflepuff Hogwarts student, complete with the classic scarf and a wand.

These, plus an old string of Halloween-themed lights (alternating skulls, Frankenstein heads, pumpkins, and ghosts) were there to greet the trick-or-treaters. One of the owl eyes blew away early on, never to be seen again, but luckily we had extra flowers and on hand!

Once it got too dark to see much, we enjoyed a slice of this jack-o-lantern pizza, helped ourselves to roasted pumpkin seeds and leftover Halloween candy, and watched the finale of a Halloween-themed baking show we'd recorded. All of this while dressed as Hogwarts students ourselves, naturally.

We played Star Stable during, on, and after Halloween as well (the portal stayed open through 11/5), of course, and we continued to participate in almost all of the Halloween activities. 

One major highlight: we didn't run into an invisible wall at this cave/hideout and could finish the Galloper's revenge quest line this year. 

Unfortunately, mid conversation with ghostly Broderick, Galloper and his horse, Morrigan, showed up. They took him who knows where to do who knows what, and Linda and Clara were left with more questions than answers.

Maybe we'll learn more next year? 

This second time around, we've gotten a lot better at completing the races without incidents (like running into things that zap you or even cause you to fail.) We've also ridden the Haunted Trail Ride area enough now that we don't worry about getting lost anymore. 

I'll miss you the most, tagalong ghost donkey!

We've even gotten better at finding the gourds.

The final week of the event, we helped 6 of the 7 wandering ghosts get back to the Keep. 

Most were ghosts of people:

Our favorites were the ones that weren't:

These quests went easier the second time around too. We sadly still don't have access to where ghost #6 was, so that one was on its own.

Until next year, Galloper. It's been fun.

It was sad to see all of it go, but it was time, I suppose. The Halloween costumes went back in the wardrobe, and the sweaters and coats have started coming out.

Speaking of Clara's fantastic magical wardrobe, it just got revamped. The thumbnails are bigger, each page holds more items, and there are more pages to fill. There's even a search feature, which is helpful if you know the name of what you're looking for. The snag: wardrobe contents didn't transfer over neatly from the old format. What was on page two is now on the bottom of page one, etc. 

It was a tedious process to fix, and it must've been way worse for players who had bursting wardrobes before. (Ours wasn't anywhere near full yet.) We really wish there was a way to reorder the pages, or even to just drag and drop items from one page to another rather than having to dump things into the backpack as the in between step.

It's possible to zoom in and rotate the camera on Clara and horse (thank goodness - this default view is not ideal for viewing what's on the horse, especially the saddle bag and pet!), but I do wish they took up more like 1/3 or even 1/2 of the screen rather than being this small. I also really miss being able to see Clara sitting on the horse from the side in the stable lighting, no rotation necessary to see how things look and no boring beige background. Oh well, as far as we know, nothing went missing in the transfer, at least. Long term, it'll be great having more room.