Hello, Boys

I think there's a good chance Lily's going to blow a gasket. Julie and I have been very bad. 

You may remember from last week that Felicity won a cute Eriskay Pony at auction. Lily wasn't thrilled about it, since the pony's stats don't quite make the cut and since we already have a Eriskay in the herd. However, she didn't make a fuss because Felicity says she's only staying temporarily.

Then this past week while Julie was playing, our buddy - the one who always seems to be selling awesome horses - was online. This time, she was trying to sell 3 stallions: two Alter Reals and one Ardennais, and she was having no luck. Julie knows that I have always liked the Alter Real artwork, while she loves the Ardennais's. The two Alter Reals were dark bay and liver chestnut; the Ardy was brown. All were +6/6 and had impressive stats. 

Only a few days remained in January, and we hadn't caught any wild horses we couldn't part with. Hence Julie decided to buy one of the Alters to surprise me with as our January horse. She chose the liver chestnut, mostly because she knew I'd love his markings and that he came with 3 colorful avian companions.

I was tickled pink, as you can imagine, when I logged on later and discovered him. Lily wasn't so happy. To quote her: "Just wait. Now some month this year we will find more than one awesome wild and wish we had that spare slot."

But the story doesn't end there, and you can probably guess what happened next. I was playing HI2 a day or two later (Pepsi was riding my new still-unnamed Alter Real, naturally), and that same buddy was online again. Still nobody was showing any interest in her Ardennais. According to her (and she's probably right), draft breeds are just not very popular on the game, at least not the solid-colored ones. I think this is so sad! *Goes to hug Della, Jenga, Eureka, and Coppertone (my beautiful draft mares).* 

Our buddy had resigned herself to the possibility of short-selling the Ardennais at auction. The very thought made me cringe. What a horrible waste that would be!

Time marched on, and February dawned in dramatic cold-and-snow fashion. On Friday night, Groundhog's Day, the poor Ardy still hadn't been sold, and our buddy was out of patience. So, I made a stop at the bank, traveled to her ranch, and bought the big guy for Julie. I'm sorry, Lily, but I couldn't help it. He deserves to stay on the game, and just think of how fun it will be to take him jumping with that strength stat! 

Julie and I both felt pretty guilty about blowing so much cash in such a short span of time, so she, Felicity, and I each took a turn mining in the mountains to start making a little of it back. 

We all found lots of sparkling gems, but Felicity and a very nervous Quickstep had the best luck above ground. They found 3 Lost Dutchies (and two wilds) in short order.

a brown Highland Pony

a chestnut Hokkaido Pony

Pardon us, huge duck

Magical levitating Dutchie!

They're sure glad they checked this ledge

Talk about an easy way to make $1.8 million. If only Lost Dutchies were always this abundant! =)

The British Appaloosa

HI2 has introduced another new breed: the British Appaloosa. This was another one of those huh, I didn't even know the breed existed additions for me. The BBB describes the British Appaloosa as an appaloosa-spotted sport horse breed, while most modern American Appaloosas are more of the stock horse mold. (Don't tell Talia, my American Appaloosa mare. I ride her English style, and she's an excellent jumper.)

Great job, creator of the British Appaloosa artwork. It is way more impressive than the somewhat awkward, tiny-hooved American Appaloosa's artwork.

a random (American) Appaloosa from the BBB

I still think the Nez Perce Horse horse has the best artwork of appaloosa-spotted breeds, though.

Wonderland, one of my awesome Nez Horses

British Appaloosas come in 4 beautiful appaloosa patterns, and there is variation within each pattern as well! I will now illustrate with BBB screenshots. =^)

Blanket:

solid blanket

spotted blanket

Leopard:

extra bold spots

blurred-edged spots

Snowflake:

subtle snowflakes

extreme snowflakes

Varnish Roan:

subtle varnish

extreme varnish

Note that hooves without white markings above them have the characteristic appaloosa striping, while hooves with white markings above them are solid. 

Like American Appaloosas, sometimes solid-colored British Appaloosas are born. Hence HI2's British Appaloosas can be solid-colored too. If a solid British Appy happens to have some feet without white markings, its hoof striping still gives it away as an appaloosa.

...but if a horse has 4 white feet, you'd never know!

Spots or no spots, I'd love to add one of these horses to our herd someday! <3

We haven't found any appaloosa-spotted wild horses of any breed this past week, but Lily and Rosetta did find another overo American Paint Horse!

Her spots remind me of icebergs. :^) It's too bad her stats aren't higher, because she's a beautiful horse with a great personality. *Sighs* Maybe someday we'll find our overo APH, but she's not it.

Lily and Rosetta also found two mahogany wild horses hanging out together on Twin Forest Isle. So appropriate!

They aren't so twin like up close. The one hiding behind the bush was the second Irish Cob we've ever caught:

And the one with her rear facing the camera was a star-less Furioso mare who looks a lot like Lily's mare Vega.

Vega

Finally, here is one more equine I just had to mention. I was auctioning the overo APH when I noticed her also up for auction. Nobody but the foreign bidder seemed interested, and I suppose I can see why upon first glance. She doesn't look very impressive.

Her stats are nothing to sneeze at, though: she is +5/6 and +77. I felt duty-bound to keep her on the game, so I bid.

I won the auction. (Sadly, nobody but the foreign bidder wanted the APH, though.) Nimbus, Lily's Eriskay stallion, is enjoying having another gray Eriskay Pony around, but I don't think she'll be staying permanently. The plan is to let her reach 1000 exp and then surrender her to the livery to (hopefully) be adopted by somebody. She is pretty cute, so I think she has a decent shot. 

Her avatar is quite amusing too: dapple gray with starkly black legs and muzzle. <3

2018 Girl of the Year

A new year means a new Girl of the Year doll from American Girl. Goodbye, 2017 model, Gabriela McBride. Hello, 2018 model, Luciana Vega.

Wow! AG hasn't done anything like her before!

I like the idea of this doll, and I really like her name. (I came close to being named Lucy myself, but I've got to say - I like the name Luciana even more.) I think it's great that AG is branching out from the traditionally girly pursuits. Her space-themed outfit is pretty cute - I'd totally wear that dress!

AG lost me with the hair, though. I suppose I can handle the permanent purple streak, even though it's not my taste. I'm sure much of the target audience will be on board with it. I just can't get past the side bangs. Ugh! Not only do I dislike the look, but I can only imagine how annoying it would be to be continually pushing them out of my eye. I'm so glad for my own hair! *Pats symmetric, non-annoying bangs.*

Luciana doesn't get a living pet in her collection, but she does get this cool robotic dog:

I wonder what her name is. It seems sad she isn't referred to by one.

Neither I nor any of my sisters are Girl of the Year dolls, obviously. All of us but Bethany have experienced being discontinued (only temporarily in Felicity's case), so we have some idea what it must be like for a Girl of the Year doll after her year is up. As this doll collection illustrates, it can't be a pleasant experience. XD

No exciting Horse Isle 2 news to share this week, so I will leave you with these photos of a few of Mom's Grand Champion horses having fun in the snow (and ice). Enjoy!

2017's Lucky Dozen

Happy New Year! It's started out bitterly cold and snowy here. We're finally getting some sunshine today, which is a welcome change of pace, even if it is still only 7 degrees.

It's official: we made it through 2017 without adding more than 12 horses to our HI2 herd. Way to go, us! Let's look back at the lucky dozen.

Mr. January:

Zenith
+5/6, +80
mine

Miss February:

Blush

+5/6, +84
Julie's

Miss March: 

Ganache

+5/6, +81
Lily's

Miss April:

Promise
+6/6, +83
Bethany's

Miss May:

Caraway
5/6, +81
mine

Mr. June: 

(This just seems wrong, but oh well. XD)

Xyris
+6/6, +69
Lily's

Mr. July

Cheeto
+5/6, +76
mine

Miss August:

Araceli
+6/6, +80
Julie's

Mr. September:

Lucchese
+6/6, +81
Lily's

Miss October:

Sassafras
+5/6, +80
Bethany's

Mr. November:

Krypton
+5/6, +76
Bethany's

Miss December:

Tesseract
+6/6, +59
?

Yep, we decided to keep the Orlov mare as our last horse of the year. Even though her stats aren't very high, we tend to make exceptions for +6/6ers. Because she is from Ice Cube Isle and is also the 4th +6/6 horse we found in 2017, we named her Tesseract. (In geometry, a tesseract is the 4-D analog of a cube. Tesseract is to cube as cube is to square.) It's hard to tell in this screenshot, but she is the first horse to get to wear the purple embroidered saddle blanket. 

Thanks to Tesseract, we found the same number of +6/6 horses in 2017 as we did in 2016: 4. 2016's were all stallions: Donatello, Iolite, 20-Karat, and Doppler. This year we found an even 2 stallions and 2 mares, and we are all happy about that!

Our final fluted horse of 2017 was obviously not an amazing, high-stat one. I think he still deserves mentioning, though. Pal and Julie fluted the huge, handsome Draftie on Blizzard Isle.

We didn't give or receive any Christmas gifts on HI2 this December, but we did decide to buy a belated gift for ourselves in January. We decided to demolish the premium carrot patch on our ranch isle (sorry, carrot-loving horses) and build our first diamond barn in its place.

From:

To:

In celebration of having slots to spare again, we went wild hunting for a bit. To our surprise, we were quite successful! We found 4 horses and then fluted a 5th.

Here is our first wild capture of 2018:

She's the same breed as our Christmas flute, and her stats are pretty good: she's +5/6 and +47. Not a bad way to start off the new year at all!

Our 2nd wild of the new year was also +5/6:

Sicilians are so cute on this game. <3

Our first flute of 2018 was also a chestnut:

What perfect markings!

If these guys are any indication of how our 2018 is going to go, I think we are in for a year of some great horses. =)