Truly Me

American Girl has been doing a lot of revamping lately. First, the un-retired historical dolls got some outfit updates and were renamed the "BeForever" line of dolls. (The name is too cool for a space, apparently.)

Now, the My American Girl line has been renamed "Truly Me." (Why is there a space here and not in BeForever? Oh, the inconsistency!) Along with the new name comes a new outfit, a lilac dress with a silver belt and turquoise shoes. All the photos used in this post come from American Girl Wikia. It's a great site for finding information on everything AG.

The outfit is rather nice, in my humble opinion. I love the shoes - not surprising, since I gravitate towards shades of blue. I think it's a shame that AG continues to choose pinks and purples over and over again when there are so many other color possibilities. But, I know many young girls love pinks and purples, so I'm not surprised AG has gone this route again.

Did you know that the modern-day dolls (they've undergone quite a few name changes over the years, so I'll just call them this) did not always come in purple and/or pink outfits? Let me take you back 20 years ago, when the line was first introduced, and then we'll work our way back to the present.

1995: Mix and Match Outfit

Scrunchie, vest, button-up shirt, magenta leggings, and black ballet flats. A strong start for the purples and pinks.

1996: First Day Outfit

Wow, this one's bright!

1998: Red Jumper

Our Aunt J.'s first doll, Allison, came wearing this one. Allison doesn't have the hat or necklace, though - those were some of the accessories sold separately.

2000: Urban Outfit

Erm, not my favorite look. Wow, those shoes... XD

2002: Go Anywhere Outfit

From here on out, purple and/or pink is always represented. We own this outfit minus the shoes. I have worn the cardigan as part of my hippie Halloween costume. :-)

2004: Ready for Fun Outfit

We own this outfit too. The sneakers are some of our favorites. The jeans have fun embroidery on them but also have random slits at the bottom of each leg. One of these days we may ask Mom to sew them shut. Both the shirt and jacket are awkwardly short by today's standards.

2006: I Like Your Style Outfit

This cheerleaderish outfit with Ugg boots does nothing for me, but this was apparently popular once. XD It's unfortunate that this is the one time that light blue got a big role in an outfit.

2008: Star Hoodie Outfit

Our Aunt H.'s first doll, Haylee, came wearing this oufit. We have one from eBay in our wardrobe as well and wear it quite a bit, especially the leggings.

2010: Real Me Outfit

Yay, the outfit Bethany came in! Of them all, this is our favorite.

2012: True Spirit Outfit

I did not care much for this outfit, so I'm glad to see it go at long last. I say "long last" because it was around for 3 years rather than 2, which had been the pattern. The shoulders of the shirt were odd, and the tall boots with short skirt look is not for me.

Belated Birthday Post

It was Mom's birthday back on the 18th. She plans to spend birthday money on a year subscription to HI2 again when the time comes. Thank you, Mom! <3

Oddly, we didn't get our happy birthday message from HI2 until May 19, the day after Mom's birthday. It was this way last year too. I wonder if HI2 is just behind or if we screwed up and chose the wrong day when we created our account? Oh well, better late than never!

We didn't have much time to play HI2 on Mom's birthday, but the little time we did have we spent on Big Forest Isle. We had Pepsi ride Napoleon, the little 6/6 Welshie we found on her birthday last year. 
The only wild horse on the isle was this black beauty, a Lusitano stallion:

 Ha ha, HI2. It gave us a 6/6 equine one year and a 0/6 the next. XD

We then used the flute in the middle of the isle by the boulder convention. This dashing Danish stallion appeared:

So, it was a rather anticlimactic HI2 visit, but that's okay. We knew Napoleon was a lucky fluke last year - it makes him even more special.

 Love you, Napoleon. <3

Two awkward flute placements occurred later this week. I'll end with those. ;^)

light dapple gray Mangalarga Marchador stallion

piebald frame overo Chincoteague Pony stallion

Parade of Stallions

It's 5/15/15. So symmetric. On HI2, the 6/6 wild stallion drought continues. This has not kept us from finding tempting stallions so far this month, though.

Remember that Dutch Warmblood? Well, he has been named, and you know what that probably means. Meet Quincy and his adorable snip.

Quincy

Then on Tuesday, we found this little dude in the livery.

Seriously, ponies don't get much more irresistible than this.

This evening, I was online at the same time as an HI2 friend who was selling this magnificent Maremmano. I tried to tell myself no, but it was no use. I could not let such an amazing stallion slip through our fingers!

We didn't yet have a fleabitten gray horse or a Maremmano, and now we have both!

So... we are failing miserably to wait patiently for that elusive 6/6 wild stallion and to keep to our one-new-horse-per-month rule. But it's May, Mom's birth month. And Mom loves the number 3. We can let this slide, right, Lily? Let Stormy love you!

An Earthshaking Day

You probably think I'm going to tell you that we finally have captured 6/6 stallion on HI2. Like this stallion, perhaps:

Unfortunately, we have not. April came and went, and still no 6/6 wild stallion. This means Lily's going to win our contest, but she won't get her companions until somebody finally finds a 6/6 wild stallion. Seriously, where are they all hiding?

So what's with the stallion above? Well, I found him in the auctions the other day. He was going to the foreign bidder for only ~ $30k. Nobody else had bid with less than a minute left. I couldn't resist - it would be such a waste for him to leave HI2 forever. We haven't decided yet if we will keep him or send him on to the humane society for some lucky player to stumble upon. I guess we'll see how May plays out.

Back to the title of the post. Today literally was an earthshaking day here in the mitten. It happened at about 12:20 this afternoon. I was upstairs with Mom in her room. (Mom brought me up there to spend one-on-one time with me on my birthday back on April 21... and what can I say? My sisters and I always milk it a bit.) 

So, anyway, there we were on Mom's bed. I was snoozing against two ridiculously soft stuffed lambs. Mom was snuggled under a blanket typing one of her stories on her laptop. Then the house started shaking! This woke me up in a big hurry. The window, the TV mounted on the wall, and various other wall hangings rattled like crazy. It is sort of like what happens when a big garbage truck or thunder shakes the house, but this seemed more intense and kept steadily on for a good 30 seconds or so. Long enough for Mom to get up, walk to the window and look out at the seemingly oblivious neighbors outside, and start thinking she'd better get off the second story. Just as she disappeared down the hall to find her mom and sister, the shaking tapered off.  

The internet was initially quite unhelpful. It took a good 10 minutes at least before my sisters, who were in the basement all this time, could find any information about it on their laptops. But an earthquake did happen, alright, and we weren't the only ones who took notice.

It was a 4.2 on the Richter scale, which means it is considered "light." While felt by most people, earthquakes of this magnitude usually cause minimal to no damage. Even so, this earthquake is the most significant one to occur here in Michigan in decades, so people will be talking about it for quite a while. I'm glad I got to witness it, though I'm with Lily when she said she never hopes to witness anything stronger. 

A Sparkly Saturday

Lily here again. This morning when I logged onto HI2, I thought to myself, hmm, we haven't been to the mountains in a long time. I checked the mini map, and there weren't any red dots on the eastern mountain isles. So, Cider and I set out. 

Since it was Saturday, I wasn't expecting to make much of a mining haul. I was pleasantly surprised. We didn't run into a single player our entire time out there. From Cavern to Pinnacle, to Crater Mountain, through Long Low Cave, we made out like bandits. All of the gems were sparkly, all of the chests were shut, and all of the nests had golden eggs. It was incredible! I guess a lot of players slept in today... or else didn't feel much like staring at gray and black. 

It wasn't until we ventured from Alpine Isle onto Rocky Cove Isle that we discovered opened chests and mined gems. At that point, Bethany took over playing and switched to her Fell pony December. She figured, like I had, that somebody was out looting Rocky Cove and Rocky, so she left him or her to it and took the rowboat back to Alpine Isle. Alpine, to their delight, appeared not to have been touched. Bethany and December happily meandered their way through the ledges and the labyrinth mining and grabbing eggs. Once they were done, Pepsi's energy was nearly depleted, and it was time to head home.

Bethany had to log out in a hurry once she set foot on Blue Mountain Isle (Felicity was chomping at the bit for us to go out and ride our real horses), so we'll never know if the gems were sparkly there too. 

Let me backtrack before I go, though. I haven't yet talked about the most exciting finds, the Dutchies and wilds, and I have screenshots! 

Dutchies #1 and #2. I'd already grabbed the golden egg from the tree on the left. ;)

Dutchie #3

Dutchie #4, a light brown Budyonny, and a sooty palomino Grade Draft

Dutchie #5

Dutchie #6

Dutchie #7

Dutchie #8. Tread lightly, Cider!

Dutchie #9 and a dark grey Highland Pony

Dutchie #10. Pardon us, Mr. Duck.

Yep, that's right: 10 Lost Dutchman mines and 3 wild horses in addition to all those eggs and gems! Talk about a productive mining expedition! =D Is this the mountains' way of telling us they've missed us?

Where's Your Star?

Look who Flora and I lured with the flute early Tuesday morning! 

She did not want to appear inside the sheep pen. XD

This is the 5th 6/6 horse I have found while riding Flora. (The first 4 were Zephyr, Mistral, Vinca, and Della: 2 stallions and 2 mares.) What a lucky girl Flora is! <3

As you may recall from an earlier post, I am rather fond of HI2's Furiosos. For having the older-style artwork, I think they're really cute - even if their hind legs are a bit wonky. Also, back when we first got our flute and Bethany posted about our first 10 fluted horses, you may recall that 3 of them were mahogany bay mares. Maybe she's right about that flute being made of mahogany wood. At any rate, we couldn't help but laugh that it gave us a 6/6 mahogany bay mare.

This mare is sadly lacking a facial marking. I was really hoping for a star, since the Furioso is also known as the Furioso-North Star. She also has a rather difficult personality and is, of course, yet another mare to further unbalance our mare:stallion ratio. But wow, +97?! With that much natural talent, there's no question that she's staying! Even though she doesn't have a star on her forehead, I couldn't resist naming her after a star anyway: Vega. Vega is the 5th brightest star in the night sky, and this mare is the 5th 6/6 horse the Flora has found - it only seemed right.

On Thursday when Julie and Fort used the flute - again on Bend Isle - it gave her another Furioso! This one was a stallion, but of course he wasn't anywhere near as fabulous as Vega. He didn't have a star either.

Am I the only one who's noticed that the avatars of seal brown horses on HI2 tend to look darker than the avatars of black ones?

This morning, Julie and Fort used the flute yet again on Bend Isle. (We've been parked there for most of the week - haven't had time to do anything more than flute.) We just had to share her with you: another gorgeous Spotted Draft Horse mare.

Julie thought this would be a lucky place to use the flute.  =)
Also note Fort's perfectly camouflaged hooves.

I just love champagnes. Throw spots and blue eyes into the mix, and wow! I hope somebody decides to adopt her. She came with a rhino beetle companion, as you can see - our third one. 

An Impostor!

Happy Easter, everybody! It seems like it's quite early this year, doesn't it? The plants are all still in hibernation in our backyard. Hence, there will be no picturesque photos of us in our Easter best outside among the flowers. Oh well. 

Here it is only April 5, and already April has been an entertaining month on Horse Isle 2.

We didn't get a chance to play HI2 on April Fool's Day, but I guess HI2 wanted to pull something on us anyway. Mistral, my grey Camargue stallion, and travelled to Sunny Glade Isle yesterday morning to use the magic flute. What did we flute? A grey Camargue! This is the first time any of us has ever fluted the exact breed and color of horse we were riding. Not only that, but this Camargue was 13.3 hands and a stallion just like my Mistral! 

Hanging out with the Mistral impostor. This is one of several screenshots I took, lol.

The wild:

Mistral:

If you click on these photos to see them full size, you will see that there are some subtle differences between these look-alikes. The wild has a freckly face, a darker muzzle, and darker hooves. Well done, all the same, HI2! My sisters and I were all quite amused. We decided to retire the wild to our ranch so that we can visit him anytime we want. We named him Marin, which is another French wind.

After catching Marin, Mistral took Pepsi around the isle to look for any other wilds lurking about. We don't usually have much luck on this isle, but for once we actually found one. 

I immediately thought "Abaco Barb" when I saw this one. Nope. Spotted Draft. XD

She is so lovely that I just had to share her here! It's not every day one finds a black silver dapple tovero with blue eyes! Her stats aren't quite up to our standards, so we won't be keeping her. I think somebody's going to be very pleased to find her in the livery, though! <3