One Last Pony

Happy New Year! Here's hoping for lots of happy memories to be made in the year ahead.

As you probably figured from the title, Peppermint the zebra was not, to my sisters' delight, the last equine to be added to the herd in 2021. Can you guess which of these ponies is the lucky last one?

Was it...

A. Our first ever badlands keeper?

B. This pinto cutie from the plains?

Or C. this silver pinto hanging out on a candy mountain?

It wasn't A.

This guy had decent genetic stats, ok metrics, and a great personality. Nothing about him wowed any of us, though, and I personally thought the combination of his short legs and long swan neck was rather awkward. 

It wasn't B either.

This mare had the highest genetic stats of the trio. Unfortunately,  though she may look cute and cuddly, she is ornery.

So, yeah, it was C. We never would have found this one had our buddy Gem not invited us to an essence anomaly, and had we not explored the area afterwards.

His performance metrics do not really stand out from the other two, but he is a little faster and has a great personality. These factors in combination with his fancy looks, which my sisters find adorable, sealed the deal. He reminds me a bit of Showtunes, I guess because they are both dark silver wonderland pintos, but he's definitely his own pony.

We aren't quite sure how it happened, but we realized while updating the HI3 Herd page that Julie and I both got behind Bethany and Felicity in our horse counts. To correct this, Julie and I each got to keep two horses in a row. I am now the happy owner of the two gray pintos: Liona and Tikal (formerly Pharaoh), and Julie happily took Peppermint and this guy, who still needs a new name. Everybody's now evened out with 22 equines. Crazy how quickly that happened, but it is what it is. At least I talked my sisters out of breeding hebras from Peppermint! (2 zebras and 4 zebra hybrids is more than enough!)

We've loved our time off over the holidays and are far from eager to get back to the regular routine. Quote from Felicity: "Happy New Year? Yeah, right. Maybe if you live on a warm beach somewhere or can go on vacations to warm beaches. There is nothing happy about 3 months of gloom, snow, and no foreseeable break from routine. Why are the only holidays in this already depressing stretch of time lame ones that don't get you any time off?"

I'm going to choose to be a bit more optimistic. It can't be all gloom, snow, and stressful drudgery ahead, right? Winter is beautiful in its own way, and at least we have weekends and HI3!

On that somewhat happier note, I will leave you with some screenshots illustrating some fun times we had on HI3 during our break.

So many mail runs...

Crossing shallow streams is so much easier on a brave horse like Waterspout!

Even more wild equines lassoed!

this wild had a secret hangout!

If Felicity were a wild horse, she'd probably hang out here too.

Or maybe here.

The one in the middle is Flying Trapeze, the ornery pony I talked about earlier. 

(Despite being ornery, she still has friends.)

Gem found a pale zebra too!

Hers is also a mare, but she is a "partial albino," which is a darker shade than our "blonde" Peppermint.

Essence anomaly gatherings! 

It was so cold you can see the horses' breaths! I love this feature of the game.

our banana kayak in all its yellow glory

Springboard and Ham have matching saddle pads!

Pepsi switched to Prosciutto while waiting at this one so he could visit with grandpa Ham

Blue is 15.2 hands tall, but he looks like a pony compared to Ham.

It was after this anomaly that we found "Mystic Dream." =)

Post-Christmas Post

I hope anybody out there reading this had a very merry Christmas! We certainly did, even though the weather declined to participate in the festivities this year. We are now happily savoring a wonderful, laid-back stretch of time off between Christmas and the new year. 

Before we move on from the Christmas season and into 2022, we have a lot to get down for the record. Apologies in advance for how long this post is going to be. Non-HI3 stuff first, so if you don't care about that, feel free to keep on scrolling.

Santa and Mrs. Claus visited our neighborhood again this year a week before the big day. A walking Christmas tree and gingerbread man joined their entourage this year too.

Charlie the horse pulled their carriage again. =^)

The week whizzed by, and before we knew it, it was Christmas Eve!

We didn't leave Santa quite this many cookies, but we do still put out milk and cookies, as well as baby carrots for the reindeer. (This year's were more like toddler carrots. You're welcome, Rudolph.)

That snow from the carriage pics had long disappeared by Christmas Eve, and no snow magically materialized by morning this year.

Christmas morning: cloudy, 40's, and a little drizzle. 

...and this is what we woke up to 2 days later. *Sighs* 

The usual Christmas morning present explosion under and around the tree

Nala enjoying one of her new toys

The winner of this year's prettiest present award

Mom's impressive Christmas haul! Family members went overboard this year. Nearly everything on her Amazon list showed up, as well as quite a few total surprises. A few notes: 

- that's a Hufflepuff badger from Build-A-Bear at the top middle. (He's adorable, and Hufflepuff is Mom's favorite Hogwarts house.) 

- the white blob under Rainbow Fish is an impressively vacuum-compressed comforter for Mom's bed. Her current horse one is so well-used it's sadly coming apart. 

- the Great Lakes shirt says, "Always Fresh, Sometimes Frozen" 

- Santa brought the unicorn mosaic sticker book

As you may have noticed, a few of Mom's gifts were actually for us! We will have even more Disney princess dresses to choose from next Halloween (or whenever we just feel like channeling our inner princesses.)

Lily as Elsa

Bethany as Cinderella

Both of these came with matching sparkly shoes!

Felicity in Courtney's Care Bear pj's, complete with matching scrunchie and fuzzy socks

Ever since American Girl came out with these pj's for their 80's doll, Mom's looked at them fondly in the catalogs we still get in the mail. (Even though Mom was not an 80's kid, she's loved Care Bears since she was little.) Grandma decided to dish out the big bucks to not only gift her the pj's, but also the adorable sleeping bag, pillow, and mini Bedtime Bear. <3 So generous!

There were only the 3 outfits to model, so I took a pass, but here I am with the cute bird stuffie so you can see it closer up. It's a Northern Mockingbird. =)

And now for a HI3 update. On Christmas Day, we did not have much time to play HI3, and the few fjord highlands wilds we did find were unmemorable, nowhere near as cool as Barleda (the enormous brindle savanna wild we found last Christmas). We did get to see some fun Christmas decor while selling the unmemorable wilds, though.

Wow, this Christmas tree is about as loaded with gifts as our real-life one was! 

Christmas Eve was another story! We found three 13.1 hh wilds that definitely deserve mentioning.

First to be caught was this maneless badlands pony stallion:

Even bald, I thought he was really cute! I especially liked his big head with that tiny star.

His genetic stat total was high, and he was brave with above average stamina.

He was pokey, though, and the ornery streak continued. 

He was on his best behavior while Pepsi was riding him - no bucking. We were not fooled.

The next 13.1-hander was a long-bodied buckskin with dainty head and legs and lovely white markings:

Her genetics stats were also pretty high, and the ornery streak was finally broken!

Pepsi seems a little less awkward on this one. =) Too bad she is so skittish.

While Pepsi was taking Millennium for a brief spin, shortly after we took the screenshots above, horsie sense activated and led us to our final 13.1-hander:

Even in the semi-darkness, we could tell what this was going to be: our first ever pale zebra!

Her genetic stats didn't tank, and she's not ornery, lazy, or a stubborn leader!

We knew immediately that she was a keeper, even if it will take a long time before we can ride her without being bucked off constantly. <3

Thanks, HI3, for making our Christmas Eve a little more white (and cream)! We've named her Peppermint, which easily won out over Eggnog. 

Speaking of peppermint, I will leave you with one final screenshot from our Christmas morning. We thought it was cute how well this giant candy cane happened to coordinate with Adelaide's tack. (Adelaide was our lucky mount for the big day.)