April Showers Bring...

Happy birthday, Mom! Saturday birthdays are the best!

Here are some photos we snuck off her phone that illustrate why May in Michigan is such an awesome month. 

First, some shots from the yard:

the weeping cherry tree in full floral glory

creeping myrtle

wild violets

New growth on the evergreens. Baby needles are so soft!

velvety baby sassafras leaves emerge already in their 3 distinct shapes

their tiny flowers aren't nearly as impressive as the weeping cherry's, but they still have them!

And now for a few forest photos from last weekend. Here is the group - minus Mom, obviously.

They were looking for morel mushrooms, which I'm told are pretty good when fried in butter. No luck with the morels, though they did find a cluster of what her uncle referred to as "beef steak" mushrooms (also apparently tasty), so it wasn't a totally fruitless venture.

They also encountered some interesting plant life:

unknown plant that looks like a cross between a calla lily and a pitcher plant

moss growing tons of sporophytes (the brown stalky things)

pleasantly round mossy mound

moss growing in a glass bottle

little white flowers

Not an egg, don't worry.
They found this mushroom cap (not a morel) that had been picked and turned upside down.
I didn't know they looked like this inside!

A colony of mayapple plants. They remind me of little umbrellas. =)

Easter Birthday Recap

My birthday, which fell on Easter Sunday for the first time ever for me, turned out to be a great one. The weather was spectacular, so my sisters and I spent most of the day outside in the backyard. As long as I stayed out of full shade, I was quite comfortable in our new coconut t-shirt and jeans. =)

We all were foolishly hopeful two snow dumps ago that we were done for the season, but no. Last Saturday night, April 27, it snowed again. Big, clumpy, wet flakes that melted by morning, but snowflakes nevertheless. This past week was chilly, cloudy, and often rainy, but at least (dare I say it?) the meteorologists aren't predicting any more snow this spring.

Needless to say, we've been staying away from the snowy isles on HI2. 20-Karat and I travelled to Windy Pines at the end of my birthday to flute my birthday wild horse.

Before we got to that, we found this:

And then this:

I was thinking, man, too bad that he wasn't my birthday flute. I'd really have had a shot at winning the best looking and coolest avatar categories with him!

I shouldn't have worried. I headed over to the kittens and catmint to flute my wild, and the wild cooperatively appeared right where I'd hoped. =^)

Wow! I think this horse may sweep the competition in all categories this year! Super handsome, solid stats, and a pretty great persona. I like my chances. =)

Here's a less obstructed view of that great avatar:

As you've probably figured out from above, my sisters and I still want to have our birthday wild competition this year even though Mom doesn't have a 2019 page-a-day horse calendar. She does have a small 12-month horse calendar by her desk, though, so we figured we'll use that for the calendar-horse-to-try-to-match category.

Here is the April horse:

Well, the facial markings are similar. Both horses are gold, pale gold, and white too! (They just have those colors in different places.)

Also, just for fun, here is my birthday dog on Mom's page-a-day calendar. What a cutie! 

Maybe we should add a category for dog that would coordinate best with our fluted horse? Mine would both be very athletic and have white patches...

In other news, we actually happened to notice last night when sign ups were open briefly for HI3! (For anyone who somehow doesn't already know, a new 3D Horse Isle game called "HI3: Infinite Wilds" is currently being developed and will eventually be launched. Some players have been allowed to sign up to test it out at various times.) We did not try to sign up, since we have Macs, which are not currently supported, but we did claim "PepsiSummer" as our future HI3 player name. We're nervous that our Macs won't ever be able to handle HI3 even when HI3 becomes compatible with Mac. (We gave up trying to figure out how to get Star Stable to work, and it is also a 3D thing that has to be downloaded...)

Oh well, only time will tell. For now, we're still quite happy on HI2.

The Egyptian Arabian (and a close call)

Happy almost Easter! Felicity's birthday falls on the big day this year! This hasn't happened since 1957 and won't happen again until 2030, so enjoy it, sis!

The weather has switched back to spring this weekend after a (hopefully final?) dump of snow last weekend. Flowers are starting to come up, the grass is getting green, and buds are popping up on the trees! Felicity may actually be able to wear the newest addition to our collective wardrobe tomorrow for our Easter egg hunt:

Mom got it for us for free from the American Girl website thanks to a $10 off offer they sent! (We've had our eyes on this tee for a while, and it was exactly $10. Fate.)

HI2 has introduced a new horse breed to the game, the Egyptian Arabian! While I like their HI2 artwork quite a bit, the horses don't seem nearly as elegant as the Morab or the Shagya Arabian. If it wasn't for the dished faces, I'm not sure I'd have known just looking at them that they were supposed to be Arabians. But, like I said, I still really like them! I'd love to have one in the herd someday.

Here are some examples from the BBB:

chocolate sorrel

dapple rose grey

fleabitten grey

(Those are some big flecks! These guys almost look like leopard appys!)

red grey particolor

red silver

seal brown particolor

silver brown

As you may have noticed from the examples, the Egyptian Arab has quite pleasing marking options for its dished face. Here they are closer up:

none

star

snip

stripe

The above 3 can happen in various combinations with each other.

blaze

The blaze seems to happen only by itself - I've never seen the star in combination with it.

particolor option 1

particolor option 2

These two obviously only happen on horses with the particolor coats and appear to occur on top of whatever other regular facial markings they may have.

And now for the close call I mentioned in the title. Bethany almost struck again this afternoon when she was clicking through the adoptable horses in the livery. She noticed 4 very nice stallions there waiting to be adopted.

Stallion #1: 

This bay Alter Real with picture-perfect markings and dapples is +5/6 and +60. He may rival my Volante in terms of handsomeness, but Volante has far superior stats. Bethany passed him by without too much difficulty. He was gone when I checked later - hopefully adopted?

Stallion #2:

Sleek, black, and placid, this noble stallion definitely deserved Bethany's admiration. Don't tell Odette that Bethany passed over this guy too. He was also gone - presumably adopted - when I checked back an hour or so later.

Stallion #3:

Julie's favorite of the bunch is this short but mighty RHD with a smattering of adorable bird catcher spots. He has 6/6 stats, but they add up to a not-that-impressive +52. He is currently still available for adoption. *Sighs* If we'd caught him ourselves we'd have kept him, no question. But sorry, Julie, we can't go adopting every nice 6/6er in the livery we see. We already have two great RHD's and several great seal browns.

Stallion #4:

Bethany nearly impulse-adopted this gorgeous golden TWH. Easy to see why, right? Other than being rather antisocial, what's not to like? If he'd had just one more measly stat point, he'd have made our +80 cutoff for instantly adopting a livery horse. After discussing amongst ourselves, we were almost ready to adopt this guy anyway and put either Mr. Devoted Disciple or Sandstorm up for sale. It must've been M.D.D. and Sandstorm's lucky day, because by then the TWH had been snatched up by somebody else. Good luck to you, big guy! <3

PepsiSummer's Right to Bare Arms

April is here, and temps have made it into the 60's today! This is the first time it has happened for us in 2019, and are we ever excited! =D PepsiSummer's back in short sleeves in the game, since we tend to base her wardrobe on our weather.

Our new Irish Draught mare finally has a name and tack! Meet Upsweep! <3

We have been good and have not adopted any new horses this week. That's not to say it's been easy! Here are two great horses I found in the livery:

I did not tell Felicity about this one for obvious reasons. ;^)

Aw, I think "Fail 6/6" is rather harsh. Just look at that persona! (I'd also call him +5/6, since I think all 6 stats should be positive to count as +6/6, but maybe that's just me?)

What is it with us and spotting nice white grey Orlovs?

Julie's Tchaikovsky

Felicity's Tesseract

This guy may have our Orlovs beat in terms of height, but both Tchai and Tess have superior stats. :^)

Backtracking to last weekend when we were still in March (and sweaters), Julie logged on to use the flute on Lance Isle. In the brief time she and Xia were there, they found 15 buried pirate treasures and 3 pots of gold! It was ridiculous - we've never seen anything like it before. Lance is not very big! Glitch or just really lucky? Who knows?!

Here is the proof:

In case you're curious, the fluted horse, while golden in color, was otherwise fairly average:

Since I just showed you a golden horse, it only seems right to conclude this post with a silver horse. Check out this gorgeous dappled silver buckskin Kinsky!

Appropriately, we plan to retire her to our Millennium Fields! Once we can think up a fitting name and give her some rump art, she'll join the herd there. =)