12/13/14: More Awkward HI2 Screenshots

12/13/14 is an awesome date and a Saturday besides. In its honor, here are some awkward HI2 screenshots. Some wouldn't have come about without Poseidon's flute, so you have him to thank in part.

Er... I like your outfit, Stem Isle rowboat dude

A wild caught mid canter

Getting chummy with a bay Kinsky

 Kiger-tree overlap

Careful, Kaimanawa!

I love it when wilds try to block portals into caves

I think this Mangalara Marchador was spying on the NPC's inside this house

Ghost horse!

Another Kaimanawa that likes to live life on the edge

When Julie fluted this guy, he appeared right on top of the NPC pony. XD

A few seconds later. The pony took the joke well.

Chatting while our horses sniff our kneecaps and a wild waits calmly in the background

Xanadu and a wild admire a levitating sunflower

An Abaco testing the water

Ah, pine fresh

How did your tail get stuck there?

We still see you...

I think she liked Pepsi

A wild raiding the grape vines

A wild investigating a playground

An unfortunate flute placement

A wild rubbing his rear on a raspberry bush

???

Snow-Finnhorse overlap

You guys aren't very good at hiding, are you?

It looks like a log has fallen on this poor wild

Blagdon Beauty

Now that it's a new month, I've been livery stalking again. Sorry, sisters, but it's starting to look like if I don't intervene, our stallion count will never catch up to our mare count. And I've only been looking at stallions, I promise! Of the stallions I've found, I've resisted a very nice 5/6 blue roan Kaimanawa, a 5/6 brown Dole, a 5/6 bay Peruvian Horse, and even a 6/6 flaxen sorrel Jutland (same color as Solitaire or things might have turned out differently).  

This guy, however, I could not pass up:

He has existed on the game for over two years but has never even gotten a real name. You know what a sucker I am for histories like that. Still, I waited about an hour after I found the little guy to give somebody else a chance to adopt him. When no one did, I took him home. The deciding factor for me: his fun, rather Christmas-y avatar:

I'm thinking of naming him Gingerbread. Or maybe Airbrush. =) We'll see what my sisters think. It's about time a Gypsy Vanner joined the herd - I think the breed is fantastic. 

Welcome to the herd, buddy. <3

Happy Thanksgiving!

Bethany, Felicity, Julie and I wish our fellow American readers a happy Thanksgiving (and a happy Thursday to everybody else)! ;^) It's a white one for us - more snow has been gently falling all morning. 

This got me in the mood to visit the Glacier Isles on HI2. Here is the Thanksgiving pony that Solo and I fluted this morning:

The placement of the wild couldn't have been better. XD

Aw! I'd forgotten that Exmoors could be found on snowy terrain as well as leaf terrain. She's the same color as Dasani, Bethany's +91 Exmoor mare. This mare's stats are +60 - not bad at all! We surrendered her to the humane association. Hopefully someone will adopt this cutie.

In other news, it looks like we may have found our November horse. It's not a Norwegian breed, like Felicity was hoping for. Felicity did find us our first Norwegian Coldblood Trotter, though. Here he is:

We didn't keep him either, though he was quite handsome. <3

The November horse is also not either of the two 5/6 mares we have been holding:

the pleasant +33 Russian Heavy Draft

the +69 snowstorm Holsteiner

It is... *drumroll*

This horse. Julie and Shady fluted it last night. At first glance, Julie was hopeful that it was a Norwegian Fjord. Nope.

It's a...

Przewalski!

Ooh, primitive apricot dun! Check out the awesome barring on her legs!

What a mane! I think Arion might have found his soulmate.

Her stats surpass those of the other 5/6 mares we've caught this month, and clearly she is aware of it. 

One of our first friends on HI2 really liked Przewalski horses. (She probably still does, but I used past tense there because she no longer plays the game.) She and I talked about adopting twin Przewalskis once, but it never happened. I'm glad we held out - this girl's adorable.

We still really like the first two November horse contenders. If only they were stallions! Then we'd be able to justify keeping all three. We may try auctioning them without allowing the foreign bidder to bid to see if anybody on the game is interested. They deserve owners that will appreciate them!

November Snowstorm

A winter storm kicked into gear yesterday afternoon. All schools in the area were closed today due to the hazardous driving conditions. And to think, it's only November 18!

Mom took a few photos in the backyard during a lull in the heavy snow. It's a winter wonderland out there!

Note the leaves on the low branch of the oak tree.
Lots of trees around here still have autumn leaves.

Summer, the family dog, wishing it was still summer

It's getting deep! 

This decorative pagoda has a hat that looks like the Pillsbury Dough Boy's.

I played Horse Isle 2 for a while this morning. Two wild horses were hanging out on Harbor Isle. Xanadu and I also found a $100k pot of gold and a $6k pirate treasure! Talk about hitting the jackpot!

The horses were pretty much opposite in color: one very dark and the other very light. :) The first was a seal brown Canadian Horse stallion:

And the second was a light gray Holsteiner mare:

What a fitting horse to find during the first snowstorm of the season! Her +69 stats trump those of that Russian Heavy Draft mare that Felicity found on Saturday, so it looks like we have a new frontrunner to be the horse we keep this month. Sorry, Russian Heavy Draft!

Felicity took over playing after I was done. She and Zoom searched all of the vast White Isle for horses. I think she really likes the new breed. =) The only wild horses she found were standing pretty close to each other. Take a look!

The one on the left was a 5/6 +53 red chestnut Finnhorse mare - 17 hands tall! The one on the right was a 4/6 +36 dun Norwegian Fjord mare - only 13.1 hands tall. We decided not to keep either, since what we really could use are more stallions.

It's going to be a long winter

The first snow of the season blanketed our area in the early morning hours on Wednesday. More came Thursday and Friday, and more is on the way for this coming week. I am less than thrilled. 

The newest horse breed to be introduced to Horse Isle 2 couldn't be more appropriate for winter's early arrival: the Norwegian Coldblood Trotter. Norway now has three horse breeds represented on HI2: the Dole, the Norwegian Fjord, and the NCT.

Sadly, no Norwegian horses have joined our herd so far. It's not surprising, as many horse breeds as there are on HI2. We're bound to find a nice 5/6 or 6/6 horse of one of these breeds eventually. I wonder which of the 3 breeds it will be?

Here's an example of each breed taken from HI2's BBB:

Dole

"Dole" is also a fruit and veggie company, and consequently this breed will forever be linked to fruit cups in my mind. If I ever get one of these horses, I will probably name it something fruity, like Peachy or Maraschino.

Norwegian Fjord

I especially love the Fjord stallions on HI2 because I think their 2-toned manes look awesome cropped. It might be better if we found a mare, though. Arion (my Thessalian stallion) might be really jealous if another horse showed up rocking an even more impressive mohawk than his.

Norwegian Coldblood Trotter

I hadn't ever even heard of the NCT until it was introduced as a HI2 breed. Such a shame - what cool horses! I really like how the artist? artists? have depicted it. It's fun that - on this game anyway - they come in sabino and splash white in addition to solid colors. 

Since both Fjords and NCTs can only be found on snowy terrain, I decided to head to a snowy isle this morning and see if I might get lucky. Rally and I didn't find any wild horses, unfortunately, but we did get to summon one horse with our flute.

No Norwegian horse this time, but she is quite nice all the same:

If she was a less common color or was a stallion, I would really be tempted to keep her. Her markings are adorable, and you don't see a personality like that every day. Her stats even add up to +33, which is Mom's favorite number. Hmm, I think I'll keep her around until the end of November. If no impressively high stated horses materialize by then, she may make it into the herd yet. 

Happy Halloween!

A quick flashback on this week's weather:

Sunday, October 26: High 59°F, partly cloudy

Monday, October 27: High 75°F, AM clouds / PM Sun

Tuesday, October 28: High 71°F, AM rain

Wednesday, October 29: High 49°F, AM rain

Thursday, October 30: High 50°F, cloudy

Friday, October 31: High 42°F (quickly fell into the 30's), rain/snow mix, high winds

Clearly, the weather opted for trick over treat this year.

Bummer for all the kids. Our house saw a record low of trick-or-treaters, which means we're stuck with loads of extra candy. What a hardship. ;)

My sisters and I attended the annual Halloween party with the other dolls in the basement. Bethany went as a princess, Julie went as a cowgirl, Lily went as a ballerina, and I went as a pig farmer. Yeah... I sort-of threw my costume together at the last minute. Good thing the piglets are cute.

I braved the cold long enough to take two shots of this year's jack-o-lanterns. Our aunt carved the howling wolf, Mom carved the cross-eyed face, and Grandma carved the star and moon face. Well done, all!

I will conclude this post with screenshots of the HI2 horse we fluted today: a black stallion! How appropriate!

Clingy Indeed

So... the flute brought Lily and Onyx this Sicilian mare back on the 18th. It was the 53rd time Pepsi used the flute, for the record.

Mmm, minty fresh!

As you can see, her avatar is a pleasing cinnamon shade with dapples. She's cute in her profile too, despite her mismatched socks and lack of a facial marking.

Miss Sicilian's stats add up to +81. Not bad at all! If she was a stallion, we'd have kept her without a second thought. Thanks to those two 6/6 Don mares, we're already two stallions short of having an equal number of both genders.

If it was up to Lily, the mare would already have been surrendered to the HA. I do see where she's coming from. We already have a surplus of mares, this mare is a common color, and it's not like we are at all lacking in skittish, lazy horses. XD

The rest of us have felt more torn. After all, we have no Sicilians in our herd yet, and she is the highest stat Sicilian we have ever caught. Hence, she's been hanging around since the 18th while we tried to decide. This afternoon, I let myself get all sentimental and imagined how it might shatter her already fragile psyche to surrender or sell her now that she's had time to settle into life with us.

What did I do next? I sealed the deal by naming her. No turning back now - she is ours. Her namesake is an active volcano on a small island off the coast of Sicily: Stromboli. Stromboli also happens to be one of my favorite Italian foods. ;^)