The Werewolves of Baton Rouge—Amber Round 8

We start the round with the main legacy house.  Yay!  The generation two heir is Amber, the youngest of Jessie Winchester’s triplets.  Check out the family tree if you need to remember who’s who.  Amber’s married to Rene Cormier, and they have two children, Daniel and little Alex.  Still, yes still, living in the main legacy house is Amber’s older brother Toby, his wife Allyson, and their children Christopher and Rita.  Every round I tell myself I’m going to move Toby and his family out, and every round I talk myself out of it.  It’s the garden.  Toby’s the gardener, and if I move him out, I don’t have anyone to maintain the garden.  But he really is going to move out at the start of round 9.  Generation three is going to have to have a gardener to maintain the place, and Toby’s family will finally get their own place.

Amber Winchester Cormier

1. Loves the Outdoors
2. Good
3. Artistic
4. Hopeless Romantic
5. Family Oriented

LTW—Illustrious Author—Achieved!

Rene Cormier

1. Natural Cook
2. Athletic
3. Good
4. Friendly
5. Family Oriented

LTW—Become a Chess Legend

Daniel Cormier

1. Loves the Outdoors
2. Grumpy
3. Athletic

Lifetime want—Reach the top of the sports career

Alex Cormier

1. Loves the Outdoors
2. Neurotic

Toby Winchester Dubose

1. Loves the Outdoors
2. Loner
3. Good Sense of Humor
4. Good
5. Handy

LTW—Creature-Robot Cross Breeder, level 9 of Science Career—Achieved!

Allyson Dubose

1. Artistic
2. Angler
3. Good Sense of Humor
4. Photographer’s Eye
5. Perfectionist

LTW—Visionary—Master the Photography and Painting Skills—Achieved!

 

Christopher Dubose

1. Loves the Outdoors
2. Light Sleeper
3. Ambitious

Rita Dubose

1. Loves the Outdoors
2. Eccentric

As you can see from the photo of Christopher above, working out as a child definitely helps a child lose weight.  It doesn’t improve athletic skill yet (which is dumb), but Christopher has lost a ton of his baby fat and is looking a lot better. 

You know who else is looking rather slim and trim?  Allyson!  It wasn’t really intentional.  I wanted her to lose a little weight after she became an adult, but I was happy with where I had her.  However she frequently leaves work stressed, so I have her jog home to get rid of the stressed moodlet quickly.  And all the sudden, woah, she’s really skinny and muscular!  She looks great, but she’s almost not like Allyson anymore.  But it also sort of fits her climb up the journalism career.  She’s in front of the camera now as a weather girl, so maybe she lost a few pounds for tv.

Because I love looking at different body types in sims 3, here’s a comparison of Allyson and one of my favorite new sims Holly.  You can see that Allyson is actually just really muscular now, and that’s what makes her look bigger.

I love toddlers in the game so much.  I think that might be my absolute favorite part of the game.  So here are some adorable toddler pictures, mandatory for any household that has toddlers in my game.

Awww, Rita’s sooo cute!

 

Awww baby Alex and Daddy Rene.  Sooooo adorable.

I love baby Alex so much.  That just might be the most adorable picture ever.  Part of this might just be my affection for the roleplay character.

Rita and Alex are both so cute, I feel like we should have a cute off.  Each new picture tries to top the other in cuteness.

Time for some toddler skilling.  The great thing about having Toby and his family still living with Amber and Rene is that I have a lot of adults to help with childcare.  The adults can basically take turns being in charge of toddler care and skill building based around their work schedule, and luckily Allyson and Toby have day jobs while Rene has a night job and Amber can work on her writing anytime.  Learning time!

Another thing I love about Sims 3 is seeing my other families out and about and visiting their houses.  Ut oh, here Christopher teleported to school in his pajamas.  Everyone’s laughing, but luckily his cousins Sookie and Selene are close by to help out.  And then Sookie invited him home after school.  Yay, we get to visiting Alcide, Frances, Sookie, and Adrian’s house then.

Daniel’s a grumpy sim.  I’m finding this trait actually kind of cute.  He wakes up some mornings with a negative moodlet that says he’s “out of sorts” and woke up on the wrong side of the bed.  It brings down his mood, but the icon is so adorable, I don’t even mind.

A family meal.  It’s weird to think of my sims losing weight by eating cake, cookies, and cupcakes, but that’s how I’m doing it. The child toy oven gives amazing meal moodlets, I’m just careful not to feed them when they’re full.  Allyson jogs home from nearby work and Christopher works out after school.  And suddenly they’re all skinny.  If only real life worked that way!

Here’s Christopher and Daniel’s birthday party.  Hmm, why does Thornton Wolfe, Morgana’s ex-husband, keep showing up at the grandkids’ birthday parties.  That’s kind of creepy.

Oh well, here are some other party guests.  Cousins Tommy, Selene, and Sookie, and Aunt Frances.

Christopher Dubose

1. Loves the Outdoors
2. Light Sleeper
3. Ambitious
4. Charismatic

Note that Christopher’s workouts as a child worked.  He kept his body mass at the same level when he aged up.  I wasn’t sure if the game would reset him to default when he grew-up, but it didn’t.  He was just slightly above the middle of the scale as a child, and he’s still there as a teen.

Daniel Cormier

1. Loves the Outdoors
2. Grumpy
3. Athletic
4. Stupid

Lifetime want—Reach the top of the sports career

Yes, that’s right, I chose to make a sim stupid.  He isn’t really ‘stupid’,  but as the trait description says, he just doesn’t get school subjects like math.  It’s not his fault, he tries real hard!  It’s very consistent with his roleplay characterization.  He’s a total sweetheart, but he just isn’t that book smart.  He met his girlfriend when she was tutoring him in algebra.  He needed to pass to stay on the football team.  And also I want to try out all of the traits.

Daniel is such a good, loving brother to little Alex.  He immediately took over child care duties on his own.  He’d feed Alex, play with him, teach him his skills, and put him to bed.  He wanted to do it all himself, he loves his brother that much.  Amber and Rene hardly had anything left to do.

Ghost sightings!  Morgana and Jessie made frequent visits.  Oh and apparently ghosts drink coffee too.  Who knew!  Christopher got the opportunity to get to know his grandfather.  Rene swapped some recipes with Morgana and discussed her grandchildren with her as well.

Christopher met a nice girl at school and finally worked up the nerve to ask her to the movies.  Her names is Lisa, and he thinks she’s the most beautiful girl ever.

The date went really, really well.  He brought her back home.  They seemed to fall in love, so Christopher decided to try to take it to the next level and kiss her.

She rejected him, and he was just devastated.  I’ve noticed a lot more romantic rejections recently, and I think it’s the new astrological signs that came with the latest patch.

This was funny.  The option to ‘cry on shoulder’ came up.  I think you’re supposed to cry on a friend’s shoulder after you have your heart broken, but she’s his friend so it was an option.  So he immediately threw himself at her after she rejected him and bawled into her shoulder.

She took it well and comforted him, so I think I’ll let him stay with her and keep working on that relationship.

Now it’s time for Alex and Rita’s birthday party.  They’re so cute as toddlers, I wish they could stay that way forever, but time must move on in my challenge.  I do have a back-up copy of the hood to play later with them as forever toddlers, though.

Alex Cormier

1. Loves the Outdoors
2. Neurotic
3. Family Oriented

I love his big, blue eyes.  Such a cutie.  I noticed after the fact that I styled him very similar to his cousin Adrian.  Oh well, I can tell them apart, but I’ll understand if people get them mixed up.  But they won’t both be children together for that long anyway.

Rita Dubose

1. Loves the Outdoors
2. Eccentric
3. Neat

Rita is gorgeous too.  I just love this house!

Here’s a few more pictures of these adorable children:

Alex is going to be an artist someday.  I think I’m going to try that as an actual career for him.  It sounds hard, but I want to try everything once.

Rita’s going to be an inventor.  I’m planning out careers now so that I explore all the different careers and lifetime wishes.  For anyone that’s interested, I’ve created a challenge based somewhat on my play style.  The goal is to try out all the different things in the game.  It’s called The Completion Challenge.  You can find the rules on the sims 3 challenges group.

Alex really loves his mac and cheese.  His father is a high level natural cook, and Alex just wants his mac and cheese.

Progress toward goals:

Amber gained a job level and is now a Pretentious Poet (level 6).  The Writing Career seems to make a reasonable amount of money, but getting enough for promotions and working your way up the career is HARD.  Still it’s quite enjoyable.  I love naming all of the books and then seeing them in the game for sims to read.  The Southern Vampire Novels—Dead to the World was a hit.  Oh so true.  Amber also wrote The Southern Vampire Novels—Dead as a Doornail, which completed the Specialist Writer Skill Challenge.  So Amber is  now officially a romance novelist.

And Amber completed the Brushmaster Painting Skill Challenge by having completed 30 paintings.

Rene played a ton of chess.  I tried to focus on that more this round.  Here’s currently level four in the chess rankings.  He’s also now League MVP (level 8) in the sports career.  Rene also completed the Super Friendly Sim Challenge, which seems to happen to all of my sims with charisma skill.

Toby was promoted to Mad Scientist, the top of the science career.  He also completed the Master Planter Skill Challenge, which is planting at least 19 types of plants in the game.  He harvested some of the grapes Connor brought back from France and grew in his garden, so now I have them growing in two different locations in my main hood.  My goal is to get all of the exotic fruits growing in my main hood so that later generations don’t have to travel to get the fruit.  I want Toby’s garden to grow a perfect plant of each type of produce.  I want him to hit 100% for types of plants planted and harvested.  Toby has now completed all of the available gardening skill challenges, except my own personal challenge to get him to 100% planted and harvested with all expansion packs.

Allyson was promoted to Lead Reporter (level 8) in her career.  She wrote two books:  Charmed and The History of Balthazar.  Allyson painted enough masterpieces to complete the Master Painter Skill Challenge.  And she completed the Photog Skill Challenge by capturing at least 75 unique subjects with her camera.  The photography skill can be difficult because the camera doesn’t always accurately record what you’re trying to capture, and it’s a pain to look up what you have and have not already captured.  Plus I find it really stupid that the pictures taken with the cell phone look better in game than ones taken by the expensive camera.

Christopher’s already completed the Personable Skill Challenge.  All of my sims with any charisma skill at all complete that one right away.  I really should stop keeping track of it.

On a side note I realized this round that I’d totally forgotten about lifetime rewards and hadn’t used them in quite some time.  My sims had tons of points to use, so I bought them a lot of things.  Having rewards like acclaimed author should definitely help make my goals easier.  I really shouldn’t let myself forget about those.

Points toward my challenge:

• Top of Career—Science—Toby
• Charisma—Super Friendly Skill Challenge—Rene
• Charisma—Personable Skill Challenge—Christopher
• Gardening—Master Planter Skill Challenge—Toby
• Painting—Brushmaster Skill Challenge—Amber
• Painting—Master Painter Skill Challenge—Allyson
• Photography—Photog Skill Challenge—Allyson 
• Writing—Specialist Writer Skill Challenge—Amber

Comments are greatly appreciated!  Let me know that you’re enjoying seeing my sims and reading my blog.