The Birthday Trio!!

**PSA:  This article was written, and intended to be published, on March 7th, 2017.  Due to annoying internet issues, we were not able to upload it until the following day.  We're very sorry, and too lazy to change all the "yesterdays" and whatnot. :)

Yesterday sure was a special day!  All three of us, Gem, Sensa, and Jo, all share the same birthday, March 6, of varying years.  This was how we all came to be friends ;)  Since we all share the same birthday, we compiled everything onto one post, so enjoy! :)

Our birthday came the earliest for me, Sensa, and by that I mean I treated myself the earliest  ;P

Awh, sleepy pony <3 (Not really - she's blinking XD )

I have no idea what compelled me to visit the livery on February 19, but I sure am glad I did! :)  Gem and I are both fond of pearl horses, and I've always had a thing for SD's, so I'm glad two of my favorite things collided here :) She originally came with the name "Runaway Halsey," but since none of us listen to Halsey, and I already picked out that cute tack for her, I thought a cute name like Pixie would suit her better :) (I think I was right <3)

My, Gem's, birthday celebrations came at a slightly more reasonable time.  I started letting my buds know about it a week before our actual birthday, and one bud went out and fulfilled my whole birthday request that day!

Jasper, the Suffolk Punch Stallion (Money only bought the foal here)

Pendragon, the Andalusian stallion (Sorry, blinking foal ;P)

Varsity, the Spanish Mustang mare

Oswin, the Nez Perce Stallion

My wonderful bud, who I affectionately call "Money" (and who will remain anonymous because I forgot to ask her permission to use her name on here XD ) traveled all the way out to Crater Mountain Isle to buy the premies for me, and of course I was oblivious to it all XD  In total, she spend 7 million HI2 dollars just on my birthday present!  Thanks, Money! <3

And that’s not even all!  When I logged on the day of my actual birthday, I headed out to Twin Rivers Isle, to flute myself a birthday wild.  And wouldn’t you know it – it ended up being one of my favorite breeds!

Before flute

After flute

This 5/6 ACD mare’s stats end up adding up to +32, which isn’t all that impressive, but I love this breed, and this (at the time) was the only color ACD I didn’t have!  I decided today that I’m going to keep her, and I’ve named her “Morton’s Girl,” after the Morton Salt Company’s girl in the yellow raincoat that’s on their salt containers XD I have no idea why this inspired me, but it did :)

And then last, but certainly not least, I got to take a very handsome stallion off my good friend, PepsiSummer’s, hands.  I’ve been wanting a Sugarbush Draft horse since before the breed was even introduced, and when Pepsi said she wasn’t going to keep him, I jumped on the chance and took him home with me :) Meet Twister!

Sorry, Pepsi, I definitely stole your screenshots XD

Pepsi was also great enough to give me some premies with the trade, and I put those lovely pets with my newly maxed Kinsky mare, Mafia.

Thanks, Pepsi! <3

And to top it all off, today I found two horses in the auction, and combined they had a full set of matching premies!  I bid on both, and they came home with me!  I took off the premies, and then surrendered the horses to the livery.  Overall I saved myself about 400k!  I then put the premies with Twister, because all the spots coordinate :)

Twister with his new premies <3 (I caught the falabella and the penguin at bad moments, evidently XD )
And thanks again to wonderful, wonderful Pepsi for Twister's awesome looking tack :)

To add to all this excitement, I was alerted to a new breed in the auction house.  I went to go investigate, and I found this breed-less, raven black stallion: 

I’m not even going to go into all the things wrong with this guy’s profile, but let me tell you:  it’s awesome to see a glitch of this magnitude XD  If I had an extra 10 million dollars, I’d take him home with me, but unfortunately, I don’t at the moment XD  I guess the story is that HI2 added this new breed, the Irish Cob, and then took it off, leaving this guy with all his lovable glitches.  I thought that this raven black guy was the only one of his kind, until later in the night, when I found another Irish Cob!  And this one was flashing!

Enjoy sneak peeks of my chats XD

Haha, this guy has even more glitches, and is even more awesome because of it!  Again, if I had an extra 55mil laying around, I’d snatch him right up!  Alas, I obviously don’t XD It was still so cool to see these guys!  I wonder when, or if, HI2 will actually release this breed.  We’ll see!

And of course, who could forget about me, good old Jo?  Well, in order to build suspense (aka I forgot to edit personal info out of my photos so they can’t be posted), I’m not going to share my story until tomorrow! >:D.  I would love to post tonight, but quality editing takes a while, and I promised myself I would enjoy a nice bath with my bath bomb :) Oh well, if anything, my post will be a nice break on a rough Wednesday :) Enjoy the rest of your morning, day, or evening! <3

Gem's Epic 36 Hours

Sorry I couldn't come up with a better title, but hey, it's straight to the point, lol.  Let me tell you, I had an extremely busy day an a half last Friday and Saturday! (The 27th and 28th)

First off, I had finally finished an experience contract for a bud's Anglo mare, Ellaria, on Friday, and I used my earnings from that to purchase my first set of 4 star tack! :D I chose the Odyssey set, as modeled here by Better Than Your Ex, my Norman Cob stallion:

Ex-Man with Puff(rock), Pudgy(corgi), and Popcorn(poodle)

I chose this set because I thought it would look really good on Ex-Man, first of all (I think I was quite right <3) and second because he needed the boost of endurance most of all XD We spent the rest of the night competing our hearts out in the tack, and overall collected 3 more wins!  (Which is kind of a lot in the HI2 world).  For the record, Mr. Superstar Ex-Man is currently standing at 35th in wins for his breed, with 18 wins in total :)

Because of this new 4 star tack, I was able to visit an Esroh I had been extremely excited to meet for a long time:  Poseidon!

Now I knew his quest was a long one, but the reward is so worth it!  After the quest is completed, Poseidon's reward is a magical horse flute, that brings one wild every 24 hours.

I wanted to get this quest done as soon as possible, so Saturday afternoon I headed out to Decay isle to get started.  First you have to find this shovel and dig (?) and basically you end up in a super long tunnel, which gets you to a haunted house, and you have to find your way out to get onto Lost Isle and meet the guardian.  Here I am, riding Watch, about to dig with the shovel.

Initially, the haunted house part made me really nervous, but after a quick Google search I found a map that made my trip through pretty easy.

I neglected to screenshot the part about the guardian, and the giant reef, and actually meeting Poseidon.  The guardian, for the record, requires you to present him with this 4* tack set in order to allow you to meet Poseidon, and he takes one of the tack pieces as well.  Individually, the saddle costs about 5 million, the bridle 3 million, and the saddle pad 2 million.  Roughly.  Luckily, the guardian only took the saddle pad, meaning I had to spend another 2 million dollars to get a new one.  Yay Poseidon.  

When I did meet him, though, he assigned me the worst part of the quest, which I knew was coming but still dreaded.  The task was to search through all the reefs in HI2 to find him 10 inkwells, which are these things:   

This might not sound like a daunting task, but let me draw it out for you.  Poseidon is asking me to slow motion walk through all the reefs in Horse Isle, and I'm not just trying to get to a destination here, I have to search the whole reef!  All the extra twists and turns no one goes into, because they're going the straight path to another isle.  Ugh.

I got the first inkwell over with on the way back to Lost Isle from Poseidon's reef.  I'm just happy there isn't much skill required to find these things.  When I got back on land the first thing I see is this cute little wild:

As much as I like fleabitten greys, I'm not a huge fan of Eriskay ponies (although I did have to get one to 500exp to satisfy Artemis, another Esroh), and this guy's stats really weren't helping his case.  Off to the foreign bidder he goes.

Now goes searching all the reefs.  On the way back from Poseidon's adobe I searched through the Lost reef and found the first one.  Then, in order, I traveled to Sprout reef, Bud reef, Shipwreck reef, Frozen reef, Harbor reef, Ancient reef, Pebble reef, and I saved the smallest reef, Rocky Cove reef for last.  After searching all these reefs, I only uncovered 9 inkwells.  Where is the 10th one? you might be wondering.  The answer will come after this break!

I just wanted to break this up with a couple pictures.  Throughout my searching I frequently visited the Barrel Racing arena and the auction house.  In the auction house, I came across a Spanish Mustang, the 2nd newest breed that everyone loves, going to foreign, with lots of trainings, and she was gorgeous to boot.  I couldn't let her leave the game!  So naturally, I bid, and the mare I named Varsity came home with me <3

Liver roan isn't my favorite Spanish Mustang color (it's grullo), but it's quickly growing on me)

Who could resist those stats? (I didn't buy her maxed, I put the last 76 trainings on her ;) )

Resuming Poseidon!  Well, on the way back from his adobe, I didn't feel like searching all of the Lost reef, cause I knew I would come back later anyways, so I just searched until I found the first inkwell and then proceeded to the exit.  There came a point, a mere five hours after I started this quest, that at last!  I found the last inkwell! :)

If you can't figure out where I found the inkwell, it's in the part with the mast in the sand dune ;)

After this miraculous discovery, I went to visit Poseidon for a second time.  This time, he sent me to Atlantis!

Poseidon required me to find him 12 hidden Atlantis treasures, which were not hidden at all very well, because the chests were super obvious.  They were easy to locate, as well, and I kept track of them all using a map I made by myself :)

After returning to Poseidon's adobe, you must wager $100,000 in order to receive the final award.  The wager is on your ability to answer 5 questions about Esroh lore correctly.  Here are the questions that Poseidon asked me, and the answers to them:

(I forgot to screenshot the 2nd one XD)

Yay! Now I finally obtained Poseidon's magical flute.  I heard so much hype about this item, I was excited to get to use it!

I decided to head out to Twin Rivers Isle and flute in the area where I found Watch, who was the first wild horse I had ever caught.  On the way to Twin Rivers, it is necessary to stop on Prairie on the way, and while I was on that isle someone alerted me to a wild horse near the village on that isle, so I went and lassoed her really quickly.

Cute markings...

...but not so cute stats.

And then off to Twin Rivers Isle I went!  I headed into the little grassy area between the two rivers, because somewhere in there is where I found Watch.  (It was such a long time ago (2013) that I don't really remember exactly where anymore.)  I chose to be by some geraniums to give a point of reference.

Oh the suspense!

The wild showed up right in front of us, and then promptly ran away

Awh, she's so cute! And I've been wanting a Datong ever since I sold my flaxen chestnut stallion, Cygnus.  Her stats would indicate that I would most likely retire her to my ranch, but she's too special and too cute to not have in my herd permanently.  And besides, all my retirees have food-themed names, and none seemed to fit for her XD I have since named her Sonata, and she and her adorable markings will be staying with me <3

Au Revoir, Ringling Brothers

Well, this recent news has given me the kick in the pants I needed to finally write this blog post, although it hurts my heart that I have to type this.

For those of you who have not heard, the Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey is closing its doors for good in May of this year.  At the time, I obviously didn't know that this would be the last circus show I would ever see from this company, and now I'm even more grateful I had the opportunity to attend.

In remembrance of the Out of This World tour, here are some photos from the show at the United Center.  This circus was truly The Greatest Show On Earth.

...I'm not really sure what's going on here

...or here

 And of course, the real reason you're actually reading this post:  the circus horses

(None of the photos I took of the "W" flag came out clearly, so here is a screenshot of a video I also took XD)

The times my family and I visited the Ringling Brothers circus will always be treasured, and the legacy this circus leaves behind will never be forgotten.

To conclude on a happier note, enjoy these photos of Buster & Misty during the holiday season.  This is definitely relevant.  The two of them might as well have their own circus XD <3

At first he wouldn't wear the hat...

...but when we brought the treats out he caved.

Here he is looking like a complete puppy because he wanted the candy from my stocking :P

Misty lounging under the tree before the presents were opened

Misty lounging under the tree after the presents were opened.