Emerald Isle Prosperity Challenge

Emerald Isle Table of Contents

2014-01-01T23:33:00.004-05:00

Emerald Isle Prosperity Challenge

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Custom Content Credits See where I got all of these awesome downloads.

Naming Credits See who my sims are named after.

Season 1 Fall
Turner Family Can the Turner children overcome the tragic death of their parents?

Sinclair Family The death of their father brings together two brothers that haven't spoken since the youngest ran away as a teen.

Cory Family A pampered princess gets a lesson in the real world after her parents disown her for having a daughter out of wedlock.

Windsor Family George has plans to rebuild his family and fortune in Emerald Isle. Will he be able to achieve his goals, or will Andrew and Elizabeth's own personal goals get in the way?

Season 2 Winter
Turner Family Will battles starvation, trouble at school, and nightmares of his parents. Will he be able to hold his family together or will they be taken away by the social worker?
Sinclair Family Evan struggles to meet his father's expectations while Cameron enjoys romancing the ladies.

Cory Family Alyssa learns to take care of herself since her mother is never around.

Windsor Family The Windsors have their first born-in-game child.

Season 3 Spring
Turner Family Daniel becomes a teen; will he grow-up well? Will finally gets a girlfriend.

Sinclair Family Evan becomes a teen. There's trouble for Cameron.

Cory Family Alyssa becomes a teen and meets a man.

Windsor Family Will the Windsors accept Philip's choice of aspiration when he transitions to a teen?

Season 4 Summer
Turner Family There's another death in the Turner family. How will the boys deal?

Sinclair Family A wedding!

Cory Family Amanda has a big surprise for Cameron.

Windsor Family Another birth for the Windsor family. Will everyone make progress on their goals, or will the challenges of a larger family get in the way?

University It's difficult for Will to leave his brothers behind. Will he adapt to college life, or will he flunk out and return home in shame? What about his relationship with Shenene?

Seasons 1-4 Funnies See the photos that have really made me laugh from the first four seasons.

Season 5 Fall
Turner Family How do Nich, Klaus, and Daniel fare with Will away at college? The family adapts when the newlyweds, Will and Shenene, move back home.

Sinclair Family Now that Gary has married Regina and Cameron has moved out, how will Evan cope?

Cory Family Will Matthew be raised by nannies as all Cory children have been, or will a relative care for him with love so that he can grow up well?

Windsor Family This house is exploding with children.

University Klaus and Tiffany apply themselves to their studies while Philip and Amaya spend all of their time dating.

Season 6 Winter
Turner Family Everything comes full circle. New members enter the family as older members move on.

Sinclair Family Business and careers are blossoming, but how are things really going at home?

The Cory Family A Cory Family Christmas

The Windsor Family There will be no more meanness in this family! It's time for some family togetherness.

The Turner 2 Family Klaus and Tiffany Turner and Philip and Amaya Windsor have a double wedding followed by a double honeymoon. It's Emerald Isle's first vacation.

University Will Daniel, Evan, and Alyssa find love or will this round leave someone broken hearted? Find out as my youngest Generation 1 Sims go to college.

Season 7 Spring
The Turner Family The Turner family grows as Will gets his wish to raise three boys.

The Sinclair Family Will Gary and Regina succeed in balancing work, business, and family or will they fail miserably? How will Gary's youngest boys cope with the pressure of his demand for perfection?

The Cory Family Amanda has to tell her fiance Cameron that she is accidentally pregnant yet again. The most popular girl in Emerald Isle throws a double birthday party for her kids.

The Windsor Family Death touches the Windsor family. Everyone deals with their grief in a different way, but each Windsor family member manages to find that special something that makes them feel happy and fulfilled.

The Turner 2 Family Klaus, Tiffany, Philip, and Amaya try to advance in their first careers. Missing his brothers, Klaus hosts a family retreat in the mountains.

The Turner 3 Family Daniel and Ashlee get married and start a farm. They also open an animal shelter with the help of a very famous guest.

The Sinclair 2 Family Lifelong friends Evan and Alyssa have found that they can love each other for who they are. They marry despite their complicated family tree, but did Alyssa inherit her mother's super-fertility?

Season 5-7 Funnies See some more funny shots.

Season 8 Summer
The Turner Family Was adopting two hurt boys too big a challenge for Will? Can the family prosper despite everyone's tragic pasts, or will the new baby tear this family apart?

The Sinclair Family It's time for Gary to settle down and retire, but life has a few surprises in store for the Sinclair Family.

The Cory Family Everyone has to grow-up eventually, but a party a day will definitely keep the Corys feeling young.

The Windsor Family The Windsor family finally grows too large for one house as Andrew and Elizabeth get their first grandchild. They certainly have their hands full as the three Windsor girls all become teenagers.

The Turner 2 Family Klaus and Tiffany decide to begin filling their empty house with children of their own.

The Turner 3 Family Ashlee and Daniel are extremely busy raising kittens and puppies in their animal shelter, but they decide to make time to start their own family as well.

The Sinclair 2 Family Emerald Isle's first set of twins are raised, but will Evan and Alyssa make the same parenting mistakes their parents did or will Christopher and Rose grow-up well?

University James Windsor doesn't want to own five top level businesses anymore, but what does he want to do?

Season 9
The Turner Family Will continues to help his hurt and abandoned boys prosper. And, for the first time, a Turner girl?

The Sinclair Family Ethan looks for love while Eli struggles with meeting his parents' expectations. Little Jack is growing up.

The Cory Family The story of the Cory family continues to cross paths with the story of the Sinclair family as Cameron helps Eli and Matthew gets to the bottom of the conflict between Ethan and Anna.

The Windsor Family Philip and Amaya need a male heir. Do they get one? Does living in separate houses divide the Windsor family or do they remain a strong extended family?

The Windsor 2 Family An unexpected surprise brings Emerald Isle's first generation 3 sim.

The Turner 2 Family Hopefully Klaus and Tiffany (two knowledge sims) really enjoy being parents, because they're about to have their hands full of children.

The Turner 3 Family The animal shelter is very full as Daniel and Ashlee try to run their farm while raising their family.

The Sinclair 2 Family Can Evan protect his children from the pressure their grandfather puts on them? Spoiler alert--Alyssa's pregnant with a Twilight Sim.

University Edward Windsor and his boyfriend Joshua Jennings make their mark on Academie Le Tour.

Other Challenges
Nickeled and Dimed Challenge This is the story of another challenge I played, the Nickled and Dimed challenge. It's more of a strategy discussion, but it does give some basic background on the characters. The children from this challenge will be converted into Uni townies in Emerald Isle and will probably eventually marry into some Emerald Isle prosperity families.

String Me Along This challenge involves getting your sim to the top of his career, but never allowing him to skill. Basically, my sim woohoos his way to the top.

Miserable Sims Teaser This is a challenge I am creating. The goal is to see lots of negative events in the game. Full story coming soon.

The Miserable Sims Challenge This is the full story of the sims that I played in a new challenge I created called the Miserable Sims Challenge. It's heartbreaking in spots, but funny too, and has a happy ending.

The Werewolves of Baton Rouge Sims 3 Legacy
Jessie Winchester--Post 1 Introduction to the challenge, my werewolves, and Jessie. The start of my legacy home and Jessie's first three children are born.

Jessie Winchester--Post 2 The family grows. Ut oh, triplets!

Jessie Winchester--Post 3 Matty completes his lifetime want. Toby meets a girl. The triplets become children.

Matty Winchester--Post 1 Matty's wedding our first generation 3 sim.

Jessie Winchester--Post 4 Toby's wedding and the triplets become teens.

Matty Winchester--Post 2 Tommy is born.

Four Weddings and Two Funerals My generation one sims pass away and the generation two heir is named.

Matty Winchester--Post 3 Sam becomes a teen. Tommy becomes a child.

Alcide Winchester--Post 1 Alcide and Frances have a child.

Christy Winchester--Post 1 Christy and Andres focus on their careers. My first Ambitions post.

Alicia Winchester--Post 1 Alicia and Connor start a family. And my first accomplishments list.

Round 6
Amber Cormier Amber and Rene raise Daniel while Allyson and Toby raise Christopher. Lots of career progression and skill challenge accomplishments.

Matty Winchester Tommy becomes a teen. Everyone in this house has some personality issues.

Alcide Winchester Sookie becomes a child and has the sims best bake sale. Baby Adrian is born.

Christy Winchester Andres accomplishes a lot as a firefighter, and Christy gives birth to their first child.

Alicia Winchester Baby Selene becomes the cutest toddler and child. Wrap-up of accomplishments.

Round 7
Amber Cormier Christopher and Daniel become children. The generation three spares are born. Toby and Amber accomplish a lot in their careers and accomplish their lifetime wants.

Matty Winchester Sam's wedding and my first generation four sim!

Alcide Winchester Sookie becomes a teen, Adrian becomes a toddler and child. Frances works on her politics career while Alcide becomes a superstar athlete.

Christy Winchester Triplets in generation three!

Alicia Winchester My first sims 3 vacation. Selene becomes a teen.

Family Tree

Round 8
Amber Cormier Alex and Rita are adorable toddlers. Christopher and Daniel become teens. Allyson gets fit. Lots of skill challenges accomplished.

Matty Winchester My oldest generation two sims become elders. My first trip to Egypt.

Alcide Winchester Sookie meets Bill. My first trip to China. Adrian becomes a teen.

Christy Winchester The terrible twos are so much harder when there are three. Generation three triplets Drostan, Elyssa, and Raelin make it through the toddler stage.

Alicia Winchester A late surprise for Connor and Alicia. Selene meets a cute new boy.

Family Tree

Round 9
Amber Cormier My first update after installing the Generations EP brings my first prom.

Toby Dubose Toby's family finally get their own home. Christopher gets into a bit of trouble, and Rita becomes a teen.

The Princes of Gwynedd
Round 1 Llywelyn begins a dynasty.

The Werewolves of Baton Rouge Toby Rounds 9 and 10

2012-01-22T02:21:00.001-05:00

Toby Winchester Dubose

Loves the Outdoors
Loner
Good Sense of Humor
Good
Handy

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

Allyson Dubose

Artistic
Angler
Good Sense of Humor
Photographer’s Eye
Perfectionist

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

Christopher Dubose

Loves the Outdoors
Light Sleeper
Ambitious
Charismatic

Rita Dubose

Loves the Outdoors
Eccentric
Neat

Refresh yourself on who’s who with my family tree.

This is the first round that Toby and his family have had their own home. They had previously been living in my main legacy house but finally bought a home of their own now that the the children are a bit older. Here’s some pictures of the new house.

Rita is my little inventor. She loves playing with toys she makes on the inventing station. But really, what kind of world is the Sims that children can play with blowtorches and craft with metal but not garden?

Christopher is still struggling with his weight. He lost a lot as a child, but he seems to be gaining some of it back as I’m not playing his house. So he jogs to school every morning and home every afternoon.

You may or may not remember that last round Christopher fell in love with a girl, Lisa, but she rejected his moves for a first kiss. She was really cute and hugged him after rejecting him, though.

Looks like he’s having more success this round.

Much more success! They’re now going steady.

He enjoys taking her out on fancy dates.

Christopher also joined The Young Politican’s club (an opportunity) and the drama and debate clubs (generations afterschool activities). Christopher wants to be the leader of the free world when he grows up, so he spends every day practicing his speeches. Rita, by the way, enrolled in scouting and improved her fishing skill.

We really miss having Rene in the main legacy house to do the cooking. Allyson has started trying to learn how to cook since the family has to eat.

Despite being a very serious and ambitious student, Christopher is still a teenager, subject to mood swings. He got a mood swing and a wish to egg an house, so I let him.

I expected the home owner to come out and yell at him, but she didn’t. It seemed sort of lame at first, like there weren’t going to be any consequences. Then, the next thing I knew, the cops came and arrested Christopher!

Needless to say, Toby was never happy with his son.

And Christopher was grounded. Even with Awesomemod, I still got the glitch where Christopher couldn’t go to school. Finally, I teleported him out so he could go to school. Then he got the stuck sneaking glitch. We had to use a Twallan mod to fix that. Goodness, how much trouble throwing eggs can lead to!

The next day, Christopher’s class took a field trip to the police station to see what happens to naughty boys. The whole experience left Christopher with nightmares about his arrest.

Luckily, Christopher discovered that he could still invite Lisa over after he was grounded. Getting to see her and hang out with her seemed to ease his stress level.

Allyson eventually let Christopher off the hook without any intervention on my part because Christopher took out the trash and did the laundry.

Allyson worked hard to get promoted in her career as a journalist. Journalism is a hard career with the charisma AND reports requirements. Allyson even resorted to digging through the trash to get the scoop on her neighbors.

Luckily, all that work paid off, and Allyson reached the top of the journalism career.

Here’s Rita’s birthday party.

Rita Dubose

Loves the Outdoors
Eccentric
Neat
Computer Whiz

Rita aged up into a party outfit and a drop-dead gorgeous socialite-looking teen. I find this hilarious since she is always using her blow torch and signed up for shop club.

She’s also a bit of a daddy’s girl. She enjoys playing chess and fishing with him.

I finally found a teen side ponytail hairstyle similar to the Peggy’s child and toddler hairstyle I lost due to the new patches. I still can’t quite find anything that captures ‘Rita’ but the party girl look is still funny on her.

Here’s my attempt at having a prom for these teens. Unfortunately I didn’t get a pop-up for a prom until after their round was over. I’m very tempted to switch back to their lot for the prom that is going to be in two days, but I also want Sookie and Adrian (the next house I’ll play) to be able to attend the prom too! I really wish you could trigger prom when you want it. I want all my teens to have the opportunity to go. Anyway, here’s my non-rabbit hole pretending it’s prom pictures.

Christopher took Lisa out to dinner at the fancy new café that came with Town Life and overlooks the ocean.

And then we had a teen party for the prom.

Rita talked to Ethan bunch for a while, but they didn’t really seem to hit it off. I almost aged up Spencer Funke to potentially be her boyfriend since they were good friends as children, but I’m waiting to age him up with his twin sister in another house. Rita is one I’d really love to see what the game would do with her attending the prom on her own.

Christopher and Lisa had a great time dancing and kissing at my prom, but Rita ended up dancing with her cousin Alex. At least it looks like she still had a good time.

Gnomes

Spying on the Neighbors

Accomplishments this round

By far my proudest accomplishment is the garden. Toby has one of every plant available in the game (except the Omni plant) growing in his garden. That includes all of the plants available from travels and all EPs. Let me just say that getting all of those foreign plants growing in my local hood was a lot of work! All of the plants are perfect plants except for the steak plant (recent opportunity), plasma plant (just learned how to plant this—you have to pick plant while it’s still in your inventory), and the carrot plant (new with Pets EP). I’ve heard there might be a glitch with the Omni plant opportunity not coming up. Does anyone know anything about that? I’m hoping by the end of the next round I’ll have every available plant in perfect condition growing in his garden.

Toby completed the Consignment Store Reputation, Consignment Store Sales, and the Consignment Profit skill challenges by selling his harvested fruit and vegetables, fish, and Allyson’s paintings. He also completed the Commercial Fisherman Skill Challenge.

Allyson completed the Human Form Skill Challenge. She was doing well completing photo collections until I installed Generations and heard of the photo bugs. I’ve been too scared to try again since. Does anyone know if this is fixed yet?

Allyson completed the Super Friendly Skill Challenge.

Christopher completed the Celebrity Skill Challenge.

Rita invented a magical gnome of invention. I’ve had them in my game in several houses from the consignment shop, but this is the first one that a sim has actually invented on her own.

Werewolves of Baton Rouge Amber Rounds 9 and 10

2012-01-21T21:48:00.001-05:00

It has been a very long time since I updated my main completion challenge blog. Basically I was playing round 9 right before generations came out, and I wanted to keep everyone the age they were to try out the generations features, so I turned aging off for round 9. I ended up playing several test hoods and different roleplay characters in different hoods for a while, including my amazing Hogwarts neighborhood (some pictures available on my Facebook), but I am now finally getting around to playing round 10. I’m going to post rounds 9 and 10 as if they happened together since there was no aging up in round 9. So I think it’s time to reacquaint everyone with the characters in my main legacy house.

The Winchester Family Tree

Amber Winchester Cormier

Loves the Outdoors
Good
Artistic
Hopeless Romantic
Family Oriented

LTW—Illustrious Author—Achieved!

Rene Cormier

Natural Cook
Athletic
Good
Friendly
Family Oriented

LTW—Become a Chess Legend

Daniel Cormier

Loves the Outdoors
Grumpy
Athletic
Stupid

Lifetime want—Reach the top of the sports career

Alex Cormier

Artistic
Neurotic
Family Oriented

Not shown here are Toby and his family, who FINALLY moved out and got a house of their own!

Despite all that extra room in the house, Daniel and Alex decided to share a room. They are so close that they just want to be together as much as possible.

The Cormier family is a very tight-nit family that enjoy spending a lot of time together. Rene particularly enjoys cooking for family meals together.

The whole Cormier family gathers around the television to watch Rene’s football games every Sunday. Rene made it to the top of the sports career and is a football superstar now.

This whole family is into football. Daniel wants to grow-up to be a football superstar, just like hi father. And Alex enjoys playing with his brother too. Daniel joined the high school football team. Besides spending time with his family, football is Daniel’s favorite thing. He loves playing football, training for football, and watching film.

Rene spends a lot of time with the kids. He likes to help them with their homework.

But it quickly became apparent that overcoming Daniel’s stupid trait was going to be too much for Rene to tackle alone. I learned recently that the stupid trait is not in the base game but is actually in the EA code and exposed by Awesomemod. For those that don’t know, it’s a really cute trait. Daniel isn’t stupid in a mean way, he’s just a slow learner. He struggles with his homework and reading. In fact, he was close to failing math. He was told if he didn’t improve his grades, he’d be kicked off the football team, so the Cormiers hired a tutor, Sabine, for him. Does anyone know if the game actually kicks you out of afterschool activities if you get bad grades? It should, so I’m playing like it does.

At first Sabine did not like Daniel. She thought all dumb jocks were the same. Sabine’s a genius and top of her class. She’s excellent at math and science. Before she met Daniel, the jocks were all mean to her and teased her.

But she quickly learned that Daniel admired smart girls and genuinely wanted to learn from her. They seemed to hit it off after that. Sabine hugged him and told him she was sorry she judged him based on a stereotype.

Daniel began spending a lot of his time at the library studying with Sabine. It worked to bring up his grades, and things also began turning in a romantic direction for the couple once Sabine learned that Daniel finds her attractive.

Sabine fits in just great with this family.

Amber’s career is going pretty well too. The writing career is a difficult but fun one. She made it to level 9 in her career and received the author’s honor trophy for surpassing 25,000 simoleons in sales.

Alex is very artistic. Besides spending time with his family, his favorite activity is painting. He’s definitely inherited some of his mother’s talent.

He’s a quiet child that is easily scared. He liked spending time with his brother especially, but when Daniel’s not around, he’s either painting or playing with the dollhouse his mother played with as a child. Sometimes when Amber and Rene listen to how he plays with the dollhouse, they can tell how neurotic he already is.

Alex is close with some of his cousins, though, particularly Rita and Raelin.

We always have a lot of ghost sightings on this lot. I love seeing founders Jessie and Morgana in my game still. But, for the first time, Morgana began actually haunting the lot. That did NOT help Daniel and Alex with their nightmare problems. Maybe Morgana wasn’t too happy about the prospect of her grandson failing school, or maybe she thought he needed help with his football strategy, LOL!

Amber eventually had a conversation with her late mother and was able to convince Morgana to stop scaring the boys.

And just to make the boys’ nightmares worse, we had a burglar break in this round. Daniel is always a light sleeper even though he doesn’t have the trait. He was the first one the scene. Definitely not a good thing for neurotic Alex to witness.

Rene tried to pull the family back together with a nice breakfast and time to chat about everything that had happened.

It affected Alex enough that he had to sleep in his parents’ bed for a while. Rene had to read him to sleep every night.

I can’t believe it’s already time for Alex to become a teen, even taking a break from aging in round 9. Alex doesn’t seem like he’s quite sure what to wish for as a teenager.

Alex Cormier

Artistic
Neurotic
Family Oriented
Coward

Rene had a big present saved for the boys. Since they were both teenagers now, he bought them a car. He might have gone a bit overboard for the boys’ first car, but there are some advantages to having a superstar football player for a father.

Let me say that I am sooo happy to finally have prom in Sims. I’ve been trying to create a prom of sorts since my Prosperity challenge in Sims 2. I am somewhat disappointed that it’s a rabbithole, but I am overall really impressed with the interactions and pop-ups you do get. It makes things really interesting. The only thing is that I wish you could trigger the prom when you want it. I want to make sure that all of my teens get a chance to attend, which is hard playing rotational style. I’m getting around the rabbithole problem by having my sims do prom-like things outside of the actual prom like take a date out to dinner and have a dance party at one of the clubs.

Here’s proud mother Amber taking pictures of her boys before they head off for the prom. Daniel asked Sabine, but Alex went stag.

Daniel took Sabine out to dinner at the formal restaurant in town before the prom.

Then the kids headed off to the dance.

Daniel seemed to have a great prom with his girlfriend, Sabine. We got a pop-up that said “Daniel definitely impressed Sabine with the chicken dance. Sabine starting doing it too.” Then, we got a pop-up that just thrilled me. “The band played Daniel’s favorite song, and Sabine asked Daniel to go steady with him!” Aww, yay! I wanted them to go steady and get married someday, but that she initiated it is just awesome!

Poor little Alex had a much worse prom experience at first. I think part of that is because he went stag. The other part is that he just became a teen, so he probably doesn’t have many teen friends. The first pop-up Alex received really surprised me, but I’m happy about it. Apparently the game will decide sexuality of your teen on its own if you haven’t had any romantic interactions with that teen. Alex first pop-up involved him asking another guy out! “Alex asked the most popular GUY in school out, and he walked away laughing. Alex was mortified.” Later, we got a pop-up that said “Alex hates himself for asking his crush to dance. He not only said no, but also made fun of him in front of all of everyone.” It also resulted in the “denied for dance” moodlet. I actually think it’s adorable sims can have a bad prom experience, and I’m glad that the game decided that Alex must be bi.

Things went better later for Alex. He did eventually ask a girl to dance. I got a pop-up that said that Alex was hitting it off with Holly Alto! That resulted in the happy “first romance” moodlet and they got a nearly full relationship bar (from no relationship beforehand). Alex and Holly could possibly be a cute couple (but I’ll probably rename her since I have another Holly). I think I’ll rename her Lauren since that was his girlfriend’s name in my roleplay.

I really love the in-game pictures you get from the prom.

After prom, it was time for Daniel to become a young adult. *sniff* As much as I love playing through the generations, it always makes me sad when they age up.

Daniel Cormier

Loves the Outdoors
Grumpy
Athletic
Stupid
Family oriented

At least now we get graduation when teenagers age up. I love the new graduation ceremony and awards. Daniel was voted most likely to have a big family.

Gnomes

Rene picked these up at the consignment shop.

Spying on the neighbors:

Here are Christy’s triplets. They are probably my favorite generation three sims. I love them so much!

And this picture just makes me giggle. Here’s teenage Bill Compton gossiping with child Eric Northman.

Apparently cousin Christopher has been overworking himself too much as an overachiever and collapsed outside the school.

Accomplishments this round:

Rene accomplished his lifetime want—become a chess legend! Sorry, didn’t get a good picture for this one.

Rene made it to the top of the sports career.

Rene completed the marathon runner skill challenge and the fitness nut skill challenge.

Rene reached cooking level 10, a little side challenge of mine for him.

Amber received the author’s honor trophy for surpassing 25,000 simoleons in sales. She made it to level 9 in the writing career.

Amber completed the proficient painter skill challenge.

Princes of Gwynedd Round 1

2012-01-10T01:33:00.001-05:00

I received the Pets expansion pack for Christmas, and since I wanted to play around with some features to decide the rules for the Completion Challenge and my current Completion Challenge hood is pretty packed tight, I decided to create a new character and start him out in the new neighborhood. I really like Appalossa Plains! It’s the first hood I’ve liked since Sunset Valley. And it makes a perfect Wales.

Several of you might know that I wrote a fictional book for National Novel Writing Month in November. My main male character is a vampire that was originally a Welsh prince from the 1200s. I’ve been reading a lot of Welsh history books and other fictional books about relatives of my character. There’s a really good book, Here Be Dragons, about my character’s great-grandfather, so I thought it might be fun to actually start back that far and work my way down through the generations to my main character. For once I can be excited about moving through the generations. Without further ado, I present my sims blog of the Princes of Gwynedd and my exploration of the Pets expansion pack.

Meet Llywelyn and his horse, Sul.

Llywelyn’s traits are equestrian, ambitious, brave, charismatic, and family oriented. His lifetime want is to become a jockey. Of course real Llywelyn’s lifetime want should be to become the leader of the free world, but I’ve done that one and want to explore the new pets features, and Llywelyn was a great horseman.

Sul is a Welsh Cob and a very beautiful horse. I intended to make the horse a boy but hit the wrong button, so now Sul is a girl horse. Her traits are genius, playful, and agile.

I’m playing this a bit like a historic challenge too. My sim can only have things they would actually have in Wales in the 1200s. Starting out, he’ll be camping as if he’s riding around the countryside on his horse. Eventually he’ll build a house out of wood, that will eventually become a bit of a palace, but not like English palaces of the time. I’m trying to make this as realistic as possible. My sim can only eat food he grows himself or catches himself. I might allow ‘trading’ for meat. My sim cooks over a campfire, pees in the bushes, and bathes in the river (a hot tub set by a water feature river I created) for now. Note that I’m not playing the whole neighborhood that way as evidence by the neighbor’s house above, but maybe I should have.

Llywelyn’s first goal is to head to the equestrian center to work on his riding skill and Sul’s racing and jumping skills. Maybe he’ll meet some fellow horse-lovers there.

Things seem to be going well with this nice woman. Make that VERY well.

These two hit it off from moment one! And she even had a horse that Sul might be interested in. Too bad you can’t tell when you meet another horse if it’s a male or female horse. Unfortunately her horse died just a few days later

Llywelyn and Sul began entering racing competitions at the Equestrian Center. I won’t bore you with the details of every race. I think we did one beginner race and then moved on to all advanced races after that. Advanced races aren’t too hard. My strategy was to do go for broke until Sul was in first, then steady pace. We won reliably in every advanced race with that strategy. Sul also quickly gained the fast trait.

I just love Sul so much!

It seems like they really did think of everything with this Pets EP. Horses can drink from the river and graze on the grass texture. I am impressed!

Something weird did happen. Sofia, the girl that Will met and really hit it off with, would not come over no matter how many times he called her (yes, I’m using cell phones since there’s no ‘write an invitation and have a servant deliver it’ option). I decided to have him go visit her at her house to see if he could improve their relationship. They still hit it off just as well. Llywelyn had his first kiss with her, asked her to be his girlfriend, and even had woohoo with her.

I saw something funny I’d never seen in game before. The stride of pride from having woohoo on another lot. So funny!

But calling Sofia, she still wouldn’t come over to his house! Finally, I figured out what it was. Sofia had become a vampire!!! Llywelyn had always been calling to invite her over during the day. This is incredibly ironic because my book is a vampire book, but I’m not supposed to have a vampire for another 4 generations. LOL! I decided to see if Llwelyn might like a different girl around town, but as you can see from the expression on his face in the next picture, he was very unhappy with any other girl trying to flirt with him.

His eyes were for Sofia and Sofia only. I decided to just go with this twist of fate. I’ve never played with vampires in game yet, so why not. Llywelyn asked her to move in with him. I guess we’ll need to get started building that wooden house since Sofia needs shelter from the sunlight.

Guess what? Surprise! Sofia has a teenage son from another marriage and the son’s teenage girlfriend is living with them too. Hmm, how would someone in the 1200s deal with this? Well, I think we’ll keep the kids as servants. We just got a gardener and a cook.

Time for some more beautiful pictures of ‘Wales’ and my favorite horse Sul.

This is my first Zenyatta, a magical horse gnome. I was so excited when I got my first one as I love trying for all the different types of gnomes. Little did I know that these Zenyatta overtake your whole game. I had dozens of them on my lot before I finally decided to play with awesomemod again because I really hate playing without it. Awesomemod automatically sells them for you.

I let Sofia keep an ex-boyfriend for feeding. I thought ‘let her drain him.’

But then I learned that being fed on actually gives the donor a positive ‘donated blood’ moodlet. Llywelyn was more than happy to donate to his girlfriend.

Llwelyn doesn’t care that she’s a vampire, so I guess I shouldn’t either. Time to propose to her since Llwelyn is sure she’s the one.

Llywelyn needs to make money as a horsemen. We were making good money in the races, but I thought I’d try adopting a horse and seeing if you could sell it for money. Meet Missy, a random foal we adopted to sell. Missy demonstrates a current glitch in the game. Foals and any horse with a tail other than the medium length tail results in this plastic look to the horse. Using the medium tail results in a much more beautiful, normal-looking horse. I found a mod to fix this, but it gave me crash to desktop problems. You’ll notice pictures going from the plastic-y look to the more beautiful look as I tried to figure this out.

I next decided to adopt a male horse to try to breed with Sul. I am so excited for horse breeding! Meet Pegasus. I love him! It reminds me of the Pegasus ponies in My Little Pony. The game has unicorns, so why not Pegasus ponies? I’m going to declare Pegasus a breed of horses. He has a much different body shape. I can actually picture wings on him. Pegasus’ traits are playful, neat, and untrained. Pegasus also gained the fast trait and agile trait very quickly.

And here’s Pegasus all grown-up. Isn’t he handsome? Not the difference between the create-a-pet picture and the in-game picture thanks to this stupid glitch.

Time to start training Missy to sell-off.

Llwelyn’s step-son asked him if he could go to the prom with his girlfriend. LOL, I think Llwelyn asked him if he wanted to join his army instead.

I did let them go to the prom. I felt a bit like the girl was Cinderella because I worked her straight up until it was time to leave for the dance before I’d finally let her change. The teens did have a good time.

I did plan to keep Sofia a vampire and maybe even have vampire babies, but I got sick of her constantly needing to do things outside during the daylight with my set-up. The toilet and bathing were outdoor only activities. She wanted to help train the horses and garden but was stuck inside. So she finally sought a medieval cure for her condition.

Seems like everyone in the household is thinking about romance right now. Even Sul and Pegasus were finally ready for romantic interactions.

Sul got pregnant the first try. I didn’t know that you can’t ride pregnant mares at all, not even right away. So Llywelyn had to ride Pegasus for racing competitions for a while.

A foal was born a few days later. Sul was named after the Welsh word for Sunday, so I thought I’d name her daughter after the Welsh word for Monday. Meet Lluna. Lluna is a Pegasus pony with a body shape like her father but the coloring of her mother. I think she’s beautiful. I have several shots here showing the difference in body type and coloring between the parents and Lluna. I didn’t notice it at first, but if you look closely, Lluna has her mother’s mane and her father’s tail color. Apparently the colors are inherited separately. Her traits are genius, fast, and untrained. Lluna has a close relationship with both of her parents and wants to be a champion racehorse like her parents someday.

More attack of the Zenyattas! On a side note, the prom queen crown makes a great crown for royalty.

Here’s Sofia’s bachelorette party. I know that isn’t very 13th century, but I’m still having fun exploring the features from Generations too. I think it’s funny her stripper was a cowboy since this is a cowboy, rural themed neighborhood.

Llywelyn met a very nice family while he was at the Equestrian Center. The adult horse on the left is Freebird Johnson. I find her particularly beautiful. I somewhat prefer the stockier body type like the Welsh Cob, and I love the reddish brown coloring. She had a foal that looked very similar to her from what we could see, and Llywelyn learned that the foal was up for adoption. Of course, we decided to adopt him right away. Meet Andy. Goodness, he has horrible traits (ornery, hates jumping, untrained), but we should be able to train those out, right? Of note, the adult horse in the front is Willow Fox, another horse I’d love to breed mine with, but I’m not sure how to since she’s an owned female adult horse. Anyone know if that’s even possible?

I think getting him when he was young so he could socialize with Lluna as a foal was a really good and cute idea.

Here’s Llywelyn and Sofia’s wedding. It took me a while to finally have the wedding, but horse breeding and living historically is hard work! I let the step-son and his girlfriend be best man and maid of honor since Llywelyn and Sofia haven’t really had much time for other friends. Of interest, though, since half of my town is vampires now, they actually will show up for a daytime wedding. Apparently they don’t mind burning for a romantic ceremony. Another funny thing I decided to try was inviting Sofia’s ex-boyfriend to the ceremony. In Sims 2, they’d have made a sim, but apparently they don’t care in Sims 3. Maybe it was just the ex-boyfriend’s traits?

Llywelyn and Sofia couldn’t keep their hands off of each other during their honeymoon. She was quickly pregnant.

With the house filling up, and another baby on the way, it was finally time for the teenagers to be adults. They got engaged and will move out as soon as the house truly is full.

Here’s their graduation. Also not very 13th century, but the graduation ceremonies are really neat! The step-son was voted most likely to succeed (not a bad guess if your step-father is a prince and there’s no actual heir yet and no previous lineage to pull from), and his girlfriend was valedictorian. I think it’s a bit crazy that the super happy moods from graduation last for ten days, though! For the parents and the kids! Makes things easier, but not very realistic.

Here are Andy and Lluna all grown up. You can guess from Lluna’s thought bubble that her and Andy wasted no time breeding. Getting them acquainted as foals was indeed a very good idea. I’m so happy with how gorgeous Andy turned out. He looks just like Freedbird, who has the horse genes I wanted. Lluna looks a bit like a Welsh pony if you ask me. I like that she looks like such an interesting combination of her parents.

Sofia went into labor. Finally, we’ll find out if Llywelyn is going to have an heir. Meet Gruffydd, a beautiful baby boy. Sofia looks so thrilled. Llywelyn, at least, is thrilled to have a boy.

Now according to the actual history, his first-born was born out of wedlock. I probably should have used Sofia’s previous child as Gruffydd, but I wanted my lineage to be sims I actually raised in-game. Here’s some more baby pictures. Gruffydd has his mother’s skin tone for sure, and he’s such a cute baby. He’s neurotic and athletic.

With the new baby, I decided to add a mechanism for doing laundry. They should be able to take their clothes to the river and wash them there. Here’s what I came up with.

Lluna gave birth to her foal as well. Meet Mawrth, named after Welsh for Tuesday. She unfortunately inherited her father’s hatred of jumping, but we should be able to encourage that out, right? Mawrth has her father’s reddish brown coat but with a white mane like her momma and grandmother. Oddly, she inherited her father’s black tail. I’m going to have to use edit saddle when she grows up to make her mane and tail match. Mawrth’s traits are fast, hates jumping, and untrained. Still, she’s a very pretty pony. Here’s three generations of my ponies: Sul, Lluna, and Mawrth.

Here’s my pony family tree. Grandparents are Pegasus and Sul. Parents are Lluna and Andy. And the baby is Mawrth. I love watching sim genetics! I’m so happy to report that the game actually does pet families properly too. Sul shows up in the relationship panel as Mawrth’s grandmother and Andy’s mother-in-law. Just like people.

Here’s the preview pic of my very busy family. If you’re counting, that’s ten, which means my family is full. It’s time to make some very tough decisions about who moves out and who stays. Sofia’s son from a previous marriage would definitely be kicked out, along with his fiancée. I should sell some horses for money, but I just can’t stand to lose any! So I’ll let the step-son take two horses with him, but which ones? So hard!

Sul is still my and Llywelyn’s favorite. She’s so playful and sweet. Also, she and Pegasus are both champion racehorses by now, so their foals will be worth more. So I’m definitely keeping them on my main lot. In the end, I decided to let Lluna and Andy move out with the step-children because they could breed on their own lot, and I can breed Mawrth using the stud option at the Equestrian center and not have so many horses on the lot. I still love Luna so much, and Andy! I’ll just have to play them out on their own lot.

Lluna and Andy are all set to strat out their own home and line full of beautiful ponies next door to Llywelyn’s home. Lluna’s traits are now agile, fast, and genius. Perfect for breeding. Andy’s traits are fast, hates jumping, and ornery. Not so good. Getting rid of the negative traits seems pretty hard.

Here’s Gruffydd’s birthday party.

I’m so happy. Gruffydd is one of the most handsome sim toddlers I’ve ever seen. Look at those beautiful eyes.

Mawrth became an adult. Here’s her adult picture. She’s definitely a beautiful pony.

Of course I have to show you lots of pictures of my beautiful pony family. To the left are grandparents Sul and Pegasus, and Mawrth is in the middle between her parents, Lluna and Andy.

And here’s my new family picture.

I think it’s about time to start breeding my two champion racehorses again.

Sofia now spends all of her time as a mother, raising Gruffydd.

But I decide since the step-children have moved out, it was okay to hire an actual servant, a butler! I wish you could edit their work outfit. This theme really doesn’t work with mine.

Coming next time, meet Sul’s new foal!

Accomplishments so far:

Sul and Pegasus completed all of the racing skill challenges (champion racehorse, long distance racer, and endurance equine). Sul completed Frequent Flyer and Tireless Leaper, all the jumping skill challenges except Jumping Star (the 15 or more advanced wins). We’re working on that one.

Llywelyn completed the Equestrian Champion Racing Skill Challenge. He’s also won two international racing competitions and an international jumping competition. Just cross-country to go, which I have heard is hard.

Things I’ve learned:

To have a foal or horse lose the untrained trait, just leave him saddled for a long time. Your sim doesn’t have to ride him at all to accomplish this. In fact, if your sim rides bareback, it doesn’t seem to help at all.

To win advanced level races, go for broke until you’re in the lead, then do steady pace.

To win international racing events, first make sure you have selected the racing saddle before entering the competition. Get the ‘pumped pony’ moodlet by training for racing before entering. Then choose take risks for half the race and go for broke the second half of the race.

Horses gain the fast trait very quickly. You don’t need to waste one of your trait choices on it because it can be so easily acquired.

Ponies can inherit learned traits from their parents.

Things I could use some tips on:

How to get a horse to lose the ‘hates to jump’ trait. We’ve jumped and jumped and jumped. All Mawrth does is jump. He’s about level 7 jumping skill, and still hasn’t lost the trait. Llywelyn praises her for jumping all the time too.

Is there any way to cure your hood of rampant vampire infestation? I love vampires, but I don’t want this hood overrun with them. This probably happened because I started playing this hood without awesomemod beofre I decided I seriously can’t play without it.

Can you breed a male horse with a mare owned by a neighbor?

The Werewolves of Baton Rouge—Alicia Round 8

2011-04-11T23:47:00.001-04:00

This is the house of Alicia Winchester, her husband Connor, and their teen daughter Selene. Check out the family tree for this round.

Alicia Winchester

Loves the Outdoors
Excitable
Ambitious
Friendly
Flirty

LTW—Reach the top of the Medical Career—Achieved!

Connor Baum Winchester

Loves the Outdoors
Flirty
Schmoozer
Athletic
Snob

LTW—Perfect Nectar Cellar—Achieved!

Selene Winchester

Perceptive
Disciplined
Athletic
Brave

Alicia and Connor have been married for quite a while now, about fifteen years, but they are still very much in love. They make time for ‘couple time’ despite their very busy careers in medicine and business. They share goals too. Currently they’re working on trying to find a way to get back to France and get to that little island and get those extra special grapes. That will complete the last exotic fruit I’m missing in my neighborhood.

To reach that goal, Alicia’s trying to get into better shape so that she can clear those piles of ruble faster. She’s still jogging daily with her sister Christy.

Then Christy often stays for dinner with the family.

Connor’s still working hard at his nectar making. Although he’s already achieved his lifetime want, I achieved that by just having him buy a bunch of nectar. I want to make him complete all of the skill challenges with nectar making, so that means he’s at the machine pretty much constantly. I don’t really want to do nectar making again with another sim. I just don’t find it that much fun.

It’s hard finding time for the nectar making, though. Connor’s the CEO of Landgrab Industries and is in long meetings all day long. He loves his job and the fame and prestige it brings, but it doesn’t leave much time for harvesting fruit and creating nectar.

Selene spends all of her time working out, learning karate, or spending time with her cousins Sookie and Daniel.

I’m not sure why, but Selene and Daniel have really hit it off since childhood and have remained close friends. Daniel even comes over to spend the night frequently, but he’s polite enough to just crash on the couch. The Cormier family seems really tight knit, and I know Daniel loves his little brother Alex more than anything else in the world, so I’m not sure why he comes to crash on the couch at the Winchester’s so often. Maybe he’s afraid to admit to his mom and dad that he’s stupid. Rene and Amber are very nice, loving parents and would understand, but maybe he’s too ashamed and doesn’t want them to know. So I guess he comes and spends long hours working on his homework at Selene’s house. Yeah, that makes sense. He IS always doing homework there.

Something’s horribly wrong with Alicia! Oh no! What is it? Food poisoning? The flu? She’s over forty, so it couldn’t be … couldn’t possibly be …

Yep, pregnancy.

Alicia and Connor got a little surprise late in life. Well, what really happened is that I’d made myself promise they couldn’t have any other children because of population control and I finally caved. I really wanted them to have another little girl. So much for population control rules.

“Connor!!! Connor!!” Alicia had forgotten how difficult sim labor really was. It had been sixteen years since her last delivery.

Congratulations, it’s a girl.

Grace Winchester

Friendly
Excitable

Connor was absolutely exhausted after the delivery. He’d stayed up all night with Alicia at the hospital, and had to be back into work as a corporate CEO in just a few short hours. He hardly even had time to catch a quick nap. Poor Connor. And then he fell asleep at work during a meeting and horribly embarrassed himself! Being at the top of the business career and a new daddy is hard.

Luckily Christy agreed to come help out around the house. She remembered all too well how hard it was to keep up with things after having a baby, well three in Christy’s case, but hers were old enough now that she could come over and help out while Connor was at work and her kids were at school.

On her way to Uncle Alcide’s training dummy to work on her karate skills for the day, Selene noticed the hottest guy she had ever seen walking down the street. He was a total stranger, but Selene had to try a pick-up line on him. He was just way too hot to pass up. Why oh why did she have to be wearing her karate uniform when she met Mr. Hottie?

“Excuse me, have you seen my bed?”

“Uh, your what? Your bed? N-n-no.”

“Well, then, I’ll just have to show it to you.”

As it turned out, the guy was not just hot, but also sweet and kind, but unfortunately very shy and easily frightened. Selene had to turn it down a notch, but they got to talking and quickly discovered they did have a lot in common. They both loved athletics and children. Selene managed to convince this new love interest, Quentin Hardesty, to come over to her house for a date the next day.

Selene immediately served Quentin a home-cooked meal. Although she wasn’t that into cooking herself, she’d always heard that the way to a man’s heart was through his stomach, and she could already tell she wanted this hottie’s heart.

“Thank you so much for inviting me over to your home, Selene. You really have made it feel so warm and inviting. My own home … well, it’s … it’s … I’m not very welcome there,” Quentin said.

“What do you mean?” Selene asked with worry. “Do your parents hurt you?”

“No, they just don’t care about me at all. My older sister is the golden child, and I am just an accident they wish would go away,” Quentin explained.

“Well, you can stay over here as much as you’d like. My cousin Daniel sleeps on the couch and stays for breakfast all the time. I can’t possibly imagine why my father would care if you did the same.” In the back of her mind, Selene also vowed to never make her baby sister feel like that. Grace might have been an accident, but she was special to all of them.

Selene had to ease Quentin into it, but eventually she got him flirting back with her, once she made it very clear she wasn’t going to reject him, and after she promised not to hurt him.

Selene learned that Quentin was on her high school football team, but he considered himself a loser of no real benefit to the team. Still, he loved the sport, so he continued to play. Selene doubted the loser part, but she loved talking football with Quentin anyway.

Selene suggested they watch some NFL Network and maybe cuddle on the couch …

The potential couch make-out session was prematurely interrupted by Selene’s Uncle Matty, who showed up waaaay to early for Grace’s birthday party. Just look at Selene’s face! Boy, you sure can tell how she feels about being interrupted. And Quentin’s completely oblivious, deeply immersed in the game discussion.

Oh well, time for Grace’s birthday. As always with Winchester birthday parties, the relatives good at cooking were kind enough to bring the party food, because Alicia and Connor definitely did not have the time to cook between raising a baby and their careers and hobbies.

Sam was even kind enough to swap some recipes with Alicia and give her some pointers on quick, family cooking.

What a party! Even Uncle Matty got up dancing.

Grace is about to blow out the candles on her birthday cake. Does anyone want to come sing happy birthday?

I guess they’re all too busy partying. Apparently it’s going to be immediate family only for this grow-up.

Grace Winchester

Friendly
Excitable

She’s so beautiful! Doesn’t she look just like a little doll?

Selene was the firs to scoop up her little sister and wish her happy birthday. She was careful to tell her just how much she loved her and how happy she was to have her in her life.

Connor took the opportunity to question the man that was apparently Selene’s new love interest. “What kind of career are you going to have to support my daughter with? It’s only the best for her, you know?”

“I don’t … um …. I don’t know, sir. I’m kind of just an unwanted loser …”

Selene had to step in and save Quentin from her father. She knew Connor meant well, but he was a snob, and Quentin was so fragile. She quickly handed Grace off to Aunt Frances, then took Quentin off into the other room for a big hug.

“I’m so sorry I’m not good enough for you, Selene,” Quentin apologized.

“Shh, don’t talk like that. Of course you are. Forget about what my father said. Let’s just dance and have a good time.”

And they did. In fact, everyone did. It was a great party. Seeing young romance bloom even brought back memories for Matty and Brenna and got them dancing together again.

Hmm, even at the party Daniel decided he had to study. He even talked his cousin Christopher into helping him. I tell you, that boy is always studying. Poor, stupid Daniel.

After the fun of such an awesome party, it was time to get down to business and work on skills again. Luckily Grace had several loving family members to play with her and teach her her toddler skills. She seems to have taken an early interest in music.

Alicia decided it was time to have the birds and the bees talk with Selene while they were working out one day. Selene agreed, rather reluctantly, to wait awhile before taking things too far with Quentin.

Connor still isn’t taking the whole thing too well. He’s not ready for his oldest daughter to be dating, and he doesn’t really approve of Selene’s choice. He thinks his daughter should be dating the star quarterback.

“Promise Daddy you’ll never grow-up, baby Grace. You’ll never take an interest in stupid boys. Be Daddy’s little girl forever.”

Accomplishments this round for this house:

Connor completed the Master Farmer Skill Challenge—yeah, I garden too much with so many of my sims. I just love gardening.
Connor reached level 10 in Nectar Making, finally. He also became a Mix Master by making 15 different nectar combinations.
Alicia completed the Amateur Ichthyologist Challenge. That was totally unplanned, just randomly happened because she likes fishing.

Gnome Sightings:

Spying on the Neighbors:

Apparently Alcide took Sookie out into the yard to teach her how to throw a football. I don’t think that pose looks right, Sookie.

Accomplishment Tracker

Lifetime Wants Accomplished:

Top of Military Career—Jessie
Raise Six Children from Baby to Teen—Morgana
Perfect Aquarium—Matty
Visionary—Allyson
Have a household net worth of 100,000 simoleons—Brenna
Illustrious Author—Amber
Creature-Robot Cross Breeder—Toby
Superstar Athlete—Alcide
Top of Medical Career—Alicia
Bottomless Nectar Cellar—Connor
Firefighter Superhero—Andres

Top of Careers Accomplished:

Military—Jessie
Forensics—Morgana
Medical—Matty, Alicia
Rock Music—Brenna
Firefighter—Andres
Business—Connor
Science—Toby
Sports—Alcide

Skill Challenges Accomplished:

Athletic—Fitness Nut (Cardio)—Jessie, Tommy
Athletic—Marathon Runner—Jessie, Alcide
Athletic—Strong Man (Strength)—Alcide
Charisma—Celebrity—Frances, Allyson, Sookie
Charisma—Personable—Frances, Allyson, Rene, Sookie, Christopher
Charisma—Super Friendly Sim—Frances, Rene
Collecting—Amateur Rock Collector—Tommy
Collecting—Gem Collector—Tommy
Collecting—Metal Collector—Tommy
Fishing—Amateur Ichthyologist—Matty, Alicia
Fishing—Commercial Fisherman—Matty
Gardening—Botanical Boss—Toby, Sam, Connor, Sookie
Gardening—Master Farmer—Toby, Sam, Connor
Gardening—Master Planter—Toby
Guitar—Master Guitarist—Brenna
Handiness—Plumber—Jessie, Matty
Handiness—Tinkerer—Jessie
Logic—Celestial Explorer—Alicia
Martial Arts—Timber Terminator Challenge—Alcide
Nectar Making—Mix Master—Connor
Painting—Brushmaster—Amber
Painting—Proficient Painter—Allyson
Painting—Master Painter—Allyson
Photography—Photog Skill Challenge—Allyson
Writing—Specialist Writer Skill Challenge—Amber
Writing—Speed Writer—Amber
World Adventures—Rubble Excavator—Alicia

Current score in The Completion Challenge: 103

The Werewolves of Baton Rouge—Christy Round 8

2011-04-07T02:53:00.001-04:00

This is my triplet house. Christy is one of my generation two triplet girls. She and her husband Andres now have triplet toddlers of their own: Drostan, Elyssa, and Raelin. See where they all fit in on the family tree.

Christy Winchester

Loves the Outdoors
Brave
Athletic
Friendly
Disciplined

LTW—Reach the top of the Special Agent branch of the Law Enforcement career

Andres March Winchester

Easily Impressed
Lucky
Handy
Clumsy (that’s right, Andres the clumsy firefighter, LOL)
Brave

LTW—Rescue 30 sims from fires

Drostan Winchester

Athletic
Brave

Elyssa Winchester

Perceptive
Brave

Raelin Winchester

Brave
Disciplined

I absolutely love this family. Expect a LOT of adorable toddler pictures in this post. The toddler stage is my favorite, and these triplets are my favorite characters, so there’s definitely going to be a lot of cute toddler pictures. Here we go.

For some reason, my triplets are OBSESSED with these pink bunnies. Of all the toys in the toy box, they pull out this pink bunny every single time. All three of them will be playing and they’ll ALL want their own pink bunny. Not sure why. I mean they do have other toys, but that is the one they all want. Aww, maybe one of them started it and they all wanted to be alike. So cute.

Raelin does seem to like the Xylophone more than other toys. Drostan likes his building blocks. Elyssa tends to play with one of the other triplets more, whatever they’re doing.

“No, no, Sissy, play nice with the dollies. They don’t go in your mouth.”

“Like this?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“That’s not nearly as much fun.”

“Really? Hmm.”

I will repeat that toddler skilling with triplets is HARD. Especially when you still have sims working on their careers. But Christy and Andres are good parents and worked themselves to exhaustion to raise their children well.

They did seem to do well in their careers. Christy was promoted to Special Agent Winchester (level 8) and then Triple Agent Winchester (level 9), a position so confidential in the government that even she doesn’t know what she’s doing. Wait, what are you wearing, Christy?

“Oh, this is my new spy outfit. I’m working on some spy business while I play with Raelin.”

“Um, really, because you’re dressed like my grandmother?”

“Well who would suspect someone dressed like a grandma of being a double-crossing triple agent?”

“Okay, then.”

Andres worked himself so hard trying to take care of the children all night so Christy could get up for work the next morning, and then he’d get a firefighting call during the day and have to respond to the emergency. He tried to take a few days off from work while the triplets were still toddlers, but the emergency alarm still went off at his house. Andres couldn’t stand knowing there were sims in need and not helping, so he responded anyway. He managed to save all the sims. In fact he accomplished his lifetime wish of saving thirty sims from death, but he collapsed from absolute exhaustion immediately upon returning home. Wow, look at him. He looks curled up in pain. I guess breaking through all those burning buildings and carrying all those sims to save is exhausting work that would make you pretty sore and miserable.

But, aww, the toddlers are so cute when they’re sleeping. It makes it all worth it.

I’d keep them toddlers forever if I could. Despite all the work, they’re the most adorable thing I’ve ever seen in the game. But since the point of this legacy is to watch my family grow, then grow-up they must. Party time. The entire Winchester clan was invited.

Amber and Rene were nice enough to bring some food to the party. That’s a good thing because Christy and Andres were just going to order a pizza for the party. Hey, when you’re raising triplets and both have extremely demanding, life-saving careers, party guests should just be happy there’s food at all. But Amber knows her sister really well and planned ahead. Rene’s a great cook, so the party had excellent food after all.

Here’s Christy’s nephew Sam and his wife Holly showing up to the party. They look a little confused as to why they were invited considering Holly was recently released from jail and Christy’s a police officer. What Holly doesn’t know is that Christy is writing up reports on the criminal activity Christy learns from chatting with Holly. Ha! Maybe that’s why Holly is doing so well in her criminal career.

Here’s Drostan blowing out the candles for all three of them. I did have three cakes. And I had pictures of all three, but somehow my computer ate them. Anyway, happy birthday triplets.

Drostan Winchester

Athletic
Brave
Family Oriented

Elyssa Winchester

Perceptive
Brave
Ambitious

Raelin Winchester

Brave
Disciplined
Bookworm

Family Portrait:

Note that is SO much harder to do with sims 3 than it was with sims 2.

After the triplets’ birthday party, disaster struck. Their house began to crumble and completely fell apart. Well, what really happened was their house became corrupted somehow. I’d been having trouble for quite a while with sims going up and down the stairs repeatedly because they didn’t think they had room to do what they needed. Then suddenly sims couldn’t move within the house at all. Andres would suddenly sink through the floor to the floor below. They’d suddenly be teleported outside. Hopefully it’s not a sign of bigger problems in my hood.

The house was deemed unsafe for sims to live in, and the Winchesters were forced to move out. It was devastating news to Christy and Andres. They’d been working so hard to provide a nice home for their family and to have nice things. But safety came first. They salvaged the things they could from the house and sold everything else at a huge loss. Who wanted a condemned house? Luckily they just had enough money saved up in the bank to buy a new house across the street from their old one, but the mortgage made them completely and totally bankrupt. It was a very nice house with a room for each child and a good sized landscaped yard for the children to play in. Here’s the family going over to check out the new house.

Drostan seems to like the new house, but apparently Raelin doesn’t. Raelin thinks her brother’s crazy to be happy about the move. She isn’t big on change.

The children all got to decorate their own rooms. Elyssa insisted on simple and sophisticated. She might be a little girl, but she’s already acting like a young miss.

Raelin wanted purple and ponies. Her room also has a stereo because she loves her music and a little toy oven.

Drostan likes very simple, craftsman-style furniture. He wants to learn to whittle his own wood toys someday.

Although they were tired and rather worried about money, Christy and Andres decided to make the best of the situation and christen the new bedroom.

The last day of the round was Sunday, so I let them all have a free day to explore the house and do whatever they wanted on their own. It was fun to watch what they chose.

As you can see I was very careful to move over everything of value from the old house. All of Andres’ awards, his fire axes and fire hydrant, their treasure chest with seeds. I checked about three times. But you’ll never believe what the one thing I forgot to move is. Andres’ fire alarm. Which is apparently the one and only thing you can’t get back in the game, even with cheats. I searched and searched the internet, and apparently it’s impossible. It’s not under buydebug because it’s considered a community object. So I guess it’s back to the fire station for Andres. He tuned up his engine but sadly prepared to drive it back to work from the station next round. It’s really a bummer.

But at least my favorite family is okay, and, like a real disaster, that’s all that matters.

Accomplishments This Round:

Andres completed his lifetime wish of saving 30 sims from death
Christy was promoted to Triple Agent, level 9 of the special agent branch of the law enforcement career

The Werewolvs of Baton Rouge—Alcide Round 8

2011-04-06T13:26:00.001-04:00

This is the house of Jessie’s youngest boy, Alcide Winchester, his wife Frances Lum Winchester, and their two children, Sookie and Adrian. If you need to refresh yourself, check out the family tree for this round.

Alcide Winchester

Loves the Outdoors
Artistic
Athletic
Family Oriented
Handy

Lifetime Want—Reach the top of the sports career—Achieved!

Frances Lum Winchester

Can’t Stand Art
Easily Impressed
Hopeless Romantic
Light Sleeper
Slob

Lifetime Want—Golden Fingers/Golden Tongue

Sookie Winchester

Easily Impressed
Good
Friendly
Family Oriented

Adrian Winchester

Athletic
Brave
Hotheaded

This is a pretty close-knit family. Although they’re always working on their own things, they often spend a lot of time together.

Frances spends all her time at work. Working on her charisma skill is REALLY hard when she’s so drained from work. So I let her spend her free time playing guitar, because it makes her happy. She also still loves throwing her large campaign fund-raiser parties. This approach seemed to work. She was elected Mayor of Baton Rouge and eventually Governor of Louisiana.

Sookie likes lounging by her friend’s pool, and she still loves cooking for the family and trying out new recipes.

Adrian just loves to play. He has his cousins over to play with frequently. He likes hanging out with his cousin Rita, even if she is a girl. Despite being hotheaded, he likes making new friends.

Also note Adrian’s room got a makeover this round. No longer a nursery, it is now a cool but natural-looking boy’s room. I’m really proud of my redesign.

Alcide made it to the top of the sports career. He’s such a super star now, he hardly has to do any actual work. He spends most of his time instead working on his martial arts. Since he’s already completed his lifetime want and made it to the top of his career, I thought I’d focus on this new skill to explore. He completed the Timber Terminator Challenge by breaking 150 boards. He can easily break space rocks now, and I’m hoping that his nephew Tommy from next door can come over and pick up the gems created from the activity when it’s his house’s round again.

He also decided to teach martial arts to his sister, Christy, but um … that doesn’t look so safe, Alcide and Christy.

That’s better.

If I understand correctly, you have to visit China to compete in the sparing tournaments, so I let Alcide take a little vacation on his own to spar with some other martial arts enthusiasts. Alcide made it to rank three.

I also had him go fishing to collect some Chinese fish to bring back home. He used them to start his own Koi pond.

Back at home, Sookie’s made a new friend that likes to hang out around the house with the family a lot. Her name is Sabine. Aww, look, everyone’s studying.

Adrian asked his sister to take him over to his friend Eric’s house so he could play.

Yes, that’s a little boy Eric Northmann. Eventually I’ll let him marry Elyssa, one of Christy’s triplets. But I wanted to watch them grow up together. Who could resist little Eric??? No one, I say.

Anyway, it was here that Sookie met Eric’s older brother, Bill. They got to talking as Adrian and Eric played, and they instantly fell for each other. When they realized they were both family oriented, the courtship started. And by the way, yes, I did make Bill and Eric townie brother. I thought it was a funny thing to do, and also in this sims game I’ve taken a lot of my role play characters and put them in different relationships. It just keeps things interesting.

One interesting thing that happened this round was that Frances found a harvester (it’s an invention that came with Ambitions) at the resale store. I had her buy it, not sure what it did. You stand in the center of stuff you want to pick up, and then have your sim use it. It sucks up everything nearby as your sim spins around. I had really hoped that this would help with gardening. I absolutely love gardening and watching what grows, but I hate that it decreases hygiene so much and does not add any fun. It just doesn’t seem fair compared to other skills for me. Especially since there’s a don’t break a sweat athletic tone. But this device was a disappointment for me. It made my sim dizzy and nauseated very easily. She almost always got sick after using it. And also it sucked up EVERYTHING, not just produce. Frances ended up stealing Matty’s gnome and some of Tommy’s space rocks, which is just not cool or very neighborly.

For Adrian’s birthday, I planned a really big party. I wanted to make it as close to a real kid’s birthday party as I could. So I invited all his relatives, and they started off by playing games in the yard.

Inside they had more teen-friendly activities like music and dancing.

And then, of course, birthday cake.

Adrian Winchester

Athletic
Brave
Hotheaded
Commitment Issues

That isn’t how I thought he’d look based on how he looked as a toddler and child. I can never tell how someone is going to grow-up! But I can see a lot of his Grandfather Lum’s genes in him. I’ll reuse the family tree picture I took when he was a toddler, because I forgot to take one now that he’s a teen, but you can see Frances’ father. I think Adrian takes after him a lot.

And ha ha ha, I’ve got a sim that’s a hot-headed player now. He’ll be a womanizing ladies man as a teen, but eventually he’ll settle down. I’ve plans for a wife and kids for him regardless of his wishes.

Accomplishments this round:

Alcide accomplished the Timber Terminator Challenge—break at least 150 boards
Alcide made it to Rank 3 of the Sparring Tournament
Alcide completed the Marathon Runner Skill Challenge
Alcide became a Sports Legend, level 10
Frances is the Governor of Louisiana, level 8
Sookie completed the Botanical Boss Challenge—harvesting perfect fruit. Much easier now that I have so many gardens in the neighborhood full of perfect fruit.

Things that amuse me:

Spying on the neighbors

I like that picture because it shows the Spire Cut Tiberium growing in the window.

Uncle Tommy tries to help out with child care, but apparently he isn’t that good at it.

Gnome Sightings:

The Werewolves of Baton Rouge—Matty Round 8

2011-04-03T17:26:00.001-04:00

This is the house of the oldest child of my founder. Matty Winchester lives here with his wife, Brenna, and their two adult sons, Sam and Tommy. Last round Sam married his high school sweetheart, Holly. The two now have a beautiful little baby girl named Emma. You can check out The Family Tree for this round if you need to remember who is who.

Matty Winchester

Loves the Outdoors
Genius
Frugal
Workaholic
Neat

Lifetime Want—Present the Perfect Aquarium—Achieved!

Brenna Winchester

Family Oriented
Kleptomaniac
Can’t Stand Art
Overemotional
Flirty

LTW—Have a household net worth of $100,000—Achieved!

Sam Winchester

Loves the Outdoors
Absent Minded
Technophobe
Loner
Natural Cook

LTW—Reach Top of Culinary Career

Holly Winchester

Family Oriented
Kleptomaniac
Savvy Sculptor
Charismatic
Hydrophobic

LTW—Become a Master Thief

Tommy Winchester

Loves the Outdoors
Heavy Sleeper
Daredevil
Hotheaded
Dramatic

LTW—Jack of All Trades (Reach Level 5 in 3 Different Careers)

Emma Winchester

Friendly
Good

Holly wants to be a master thief, so I’m letting her. Within an hour of first showing up at the criminal warehouse for her very first day, Holly got arrested! She was absolutely humiliated as she was paraded through town in the cop car and then brought into the jail. They fingerprinted her and everything! Worst of all was that her job performance suffered heavily from her time spent in jail. But it didn’t deter Holly’s dreams any. Sam’s wife and Emma’s mommy is now officially OFFICIALLY a criminal, a spent time in jail criminal.

Personally, I absolutely love that they put jail in sims 3. It makes for lots of fun story possibilities. But why is Holly riding in the front seat instead of the back? And why isn’t she wearing handcuffs? Come on, they figured out how to do this for the secret society in sims 2, surely they could have added that here.

Sam still loves Holly just the same, though. And he was happy to have her home after her time in jail.

Speaking of illegal activities, Brenna came out of one of her concerts fully naked! That must have been some concert, but I’m pretty sure that’s not legal. She even performed outside the venue naked too. That’s one way to get tips!

I think it was probably a teleporter mishap, because I use the teleporter constantly and you can sometimes wind up somewhere without your clothes with the teleporter. Ordinarily you switch into clothes right away afterward and get the embarrassed moodlet, but I think because Brenna was going straight into her concert, she somehow never bothered to put on her clothes. Wardrobe malfunction!

I’m sure the dinner table conversation was very interesting that night. Holly was now an ex-con, and Brenna was a nudist/exhibitionist.

Holly tried to make up for the shame she’d brought on her family by sculpting her father-in-law in ice. I thought it was a nice attempt at making peace.

Ice Matty, the oldest of my generation two sims, will be forever young and forever in my game, oh, or until the ice melts. Anyone know how long that takes or if it actually happens?

Brenna has been doing a good job of keeping in shape lately and not letting that extra weight creep back on like last round. Here she is with her brother-in-law and neighbor, Claude.

Since they need athletic skill for their criminal careers, Tommy and Holly have been jogging together. I finally tried the body sculptor reward for Holly, and unlike it seems most people, I actually love it! The part that I didn’t know about it is that you can reuse it over and over and over again. And other people in the family can use it too! So although you might gradually return to a different body size, you can just use the machine again and change it again. I’m actually using it for Holly to keep her at her genetic normal size. All that exercising was turning her rail thin. I wanted her to gain athletic points, but I liked her body. So using the body sculptor reward is working well.

Time for Emma’s birthday party. Of course cooking lover cousin Sookie brought a nice dish to the party. Holly and Sam socialized with the guests while Grandma Brenna took Emma to her birthday cake.

Emma Winchester

Friendly
Good

Emma does look a lot like her mama, which is what I hoped for. She has pretty black hair and her mother’s aqua blue eyes.

Sam spent a lot of time with his father out in the garden. He hoped having all fresh ingredients would make his cooking better.

And improve his job performance. He had dreams of owning the diner someday.

Soon it was time for Brenna's birthday party. Since this was my first generation two sim becoming an elder, everyone came prepared for a big bash. Just look at all the food they brought!

Brenna was having trouble coming to terms with the fact that she was indeed an elder now. Maybe it was because all of her brother and sister in laws still looked so very young. But she was the oldest, having been Matty’s babysitter when he was a child. Maybe it was because she was a star, and stars never showed their age. But Brenna was a grandmother now, and finally she came to accept that she couldn’t look twenty forever.

Holly had finally been making some progress as a criminal. One day she came home from work with an opportunity. If she smuggled something to Egypt, she could get a raise. Yeah, sure, that sounds … safe and smart. Mmmhmm. I don’t even want to guess what kind of criminal she is based on the outfit she’s wearing. Goodness, I hope Sam never finds out.

Holly decided to say yes to the opportunity. Tommy decided to go with her. His own criminal skills might help her out, and he’d wanted a chance to search for Egyptian collectibles. Matty surprised everyone when he said he wanted to go Egypt when Holly announced the ‘business trip.’ But Matty explained that he loved fishing so much and he’d always wanted to catch EVERY kind of fish, not just the ones available in Baton Rouge. Since his presence would decrease how suspicious they looked, Holly agreed to take Matty along.

“Don’t worry, precious. You can stay with Daddy Sam and Grandma Brenna while Mommy smuggles drugs into Egypt. You’ll be fine.”

I found Egypt a lot harder than France. For one the base camp isn’t nearly as nice. Also it’s so much larger, it takes forever to get around. Also the tombs were harder. It’s going to take a lot of trips to Egypt to fully explore it.

Matty spent most of his time there fishing. He managed to catch all of the types of fish available in Egypt. He needs to visit France and China before dying so he can accomplish catching all the types of fish. I unfortunately suffered a game crash while playing in Egypt. :-( I just had to restart and everything was okay, but I lost a few hours of play. During that time, Matty had caught an Egyptian gnome, which I really, really wanted. Unfortunately it was lost to the crash. Matty did manage to catch two more gnomes while fishing, but they were unfortunately just regular gnomes that aren’t magical, just in different clothes. Oh well, just another thing that remains on the to do list for future generations.

Tommy spent all of his time in Egypt running. He ran all over the place looking for collectables. Just to make my game crash even more maddening, he caught a Cleopatra Butterfly, one of the rarest types of butterflies, right before the crash. And of course he couldn’t find one of those again no matter how hard I tried. I’m also experiencing some sort of glitch. BEFORE Tommy left for Egypt his space rocks percent found was at 82%. After finding new types in Egypt, his percent dropped to 30%! I have no idea what this means, but it might just be impossible for me to collect every type of space rock. On the bright side, Tommy’s looking quite fit.

After making her ‘delivery’, Holly collected some exotic fruit to bring home to Sam. She knew he’d be so proud to be the first sim in Baton Rouge to plant fruits from Egypt. Then she did get some downtime to relax and enjoy her little vacation.

I also discovered one of my favorite things in the game: the fire pit. This is perfect for playing historic sims! Your sim can roast any kind of fruit, vegetable, or fish in the fire pit and eat it! I’ve played a historic challenge where my sims can only eat things they grow or catch themselves thanks to this fire pit. I should blog that sometime.

Once they were back at home, it was time for Matty to accept that he too was a grandpa now, and getting to be an old man.

It’s so hard for me to let my sims become elders and eventually die. Loving the upcoming generations helps, though. I want to see Emma grow up, so time has to continue on.

Accomplishments This Round

Tommy completed the Gem Collector, Metal Collector, and Amateur Rock Finder Challenges. He also completed the Fitness Nut skill challenge from all that running around.
Tommy reached level 5 in the criminal career. Time for him to quit his life of crime and try something else next round. He doesn’t want to end up an ex-con like Holly. Maybe Sam will find out what he’s been up to and force him to come work for him at the diner.
Holly made it to level 4 in the criminal career, Getaway Driver. That time in prison really hurt her, and she kept screwing up and upsetting the boss.
Sam completed the Master Farmer Challenge (harvested 650 vegetables).
Sam made it to level 5, Line Cook, in the culinary career at the diner.

The Werewolves of Baton Rouge—Amber Round 8

2011-01-23T11:47:00.001-05:00

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

Loves the Outdoors
Good
Artistic
Hopeless Romantic
Family Oriented

LTW—Illustrious Author—Achieved!

Rene Cormier

Natural Cook
Athletic
Good
Friendly
Family Oriented

LTW—Become a Chess Legend

Daniel Cormier

Loves the Outdoors
Grumpy
Athletic

Lifetime want—Reach the top of the sports career

Alex Cormier

Loves the Outdoors
Neurotic

Toby Winchester Dubose

Loves the Outdoors
Loner
Good Sense of Humor
Good
Handy

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

Allyson Dubose

Artistic
Angler
Good Sense of Humor
Photographer’s Eye
Perfectionist

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

Christopher Dubose

Loves the Outdoors
Light Sleeper
Ambitious

Rita Dubose

Loves the Outdoors
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

Loves the Outdoors
Light Sleeper
Ambitious
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

Loves the Outdoors
Grumpy
Athletic
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

Loves the Outdoors
Neurotic
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

Loves the Outdoors
Eccentric
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.

The Werewolves of Baton Rouge—Alicia Round 7

2011-01-07T02:46:00.001-05:00

The last house in this round belongs to Alicia Winchester, her husband Connor, and their daughter Selene.

Alicia Winchester

Loves the Outdoors
Excitable
Ambitious
Friendly
Flirty

LTW—Reach the top of the Medical Career

Connor Baum Winchester

Loves the Outdoors
Flirty
Schmoozer
Athletic
Snob

LTW—Perfect Nectar Cellar

Selene Winchester

Perceptive
Disciplined
Athletic

Let’s check in on this house. Alicia is doing great in the medical career. Now that she’s no longer off for maternity leave or trying to teach a toddler in her down time, she’s getting promotion after promotion. First she gets a promotion to Neurosurgeon (level 9) and then all the way to the top to World Renowned Surgeon (level 10). This also completes her lifetime wish.

Connor’s doing well at work too. He got himself promoted to CEO (level 8), but he’s so very exhausted, he passed out on the street! Working long hours at the office, coming home and gardening, and then nectar making has taken it’s toll on him. Gardening and nectar making should be fun as his hobby, but they just drain him.

Still Connor worked hard and sucked up to the boss and schmoozed his coworkers and got himself promoted, first to Chairman of the Board (level 9) and then to Power Broker (level 10), all the way to the top of business career.

Selene is doing well in school.

Although I don’t see her as much of a cook, I set her to making the family muffins and cookies with the toy over because of very high mood boost it gives sims.

What she really enjoys is running around playing tag with her cousin Daniel and playing chess with her cousin Christopher. She’s really developed a taste for logic and chess. I’d planned to make her lifetime wish Physical Perfection but I might have to reconsider and go for Martial Arts Master or Perfect Mind Perfect Body.

Here she is dreaming of the football player she’ll marry some day.

With everyone at the top of their careers, it was time for a vacation. Connor booked them a trip to France so he could get better French grapes and makes better, more expensive and complex nectars.

My family lands at base camp. This should be easy, right? I’ve never wanted to play with World Adventures because I know there’s a lot of tomb exploring and traps and things, but I just want Connor to run around and pick up a few exotic seeds, and then he can have a nice romantic vacation, right?

Uh, wrong. Here Connor’s harvesting some grapes from the nectary. That was the only easy to find fruit available. I searched all over for seeds only to find none. I searched house after house looking for gardens, but wouldn’t find any, or would find that they only had common household vegetables. It was so frustrating.

I discovered that there was a little island with the exotic, expensive, rare grapes on it. But you can’t easily get there. You can teleport, which my sim can’t do. Or you can go through a tomb. Tomb adventures I guess it is. Only after endless tomb exploring did I read online that you have to have an axe from China to even enter that tomb. Dang it! World Adventures is frustrating!

I found that I do actually like the tomb exploration, but I like it as a totally separate kind of game than sims. It’s like playing Zelda, which I also like, but it’s nothing like sims really. But I liked it enough to get both Connor and Alicia to level one visas, and Alicia accomplished the Rubble Excavator Challenge. I think I’ll come back again. It’s like playing Mario in that you get addicted to it, trying again and again to defeat something or find and achieve something, but it’s not my traditional sims play. Maybe it’s good, though, to break up my traditional birthday party, wedding, baby born style play. There are a lot of challenges like the skill challenges to achieve while traveling, so I’ll have to be sure I achieve all of those as well as all of the skill challenges in my hood.

I spent a LOT of time reading forums online to find secrets and did eventually find a garden where Connor could find some more exotic plants, but unfortunately once I found that none of the rarer plants were at the harvest stage. Drats! Blocked again! But Connor did reach level 10 gardening and level 7 nectar making while in France.

The real advantage of having Connor travel to France was the number of premade nectar bottles available. He found quite a few expensive ones while adventuring, and he purchased from the nectary their most expensive bottles daily. My intent was for him to take them home and try to learn the recipes and recreate the nectars in mass quantities at home. I honestly didn’t keep track of how many bottles Connor was buying or how much money he was spending. Connor likes the expensive nectar bottles, and his family has the money, so I let them buy them. When he got home I placed the bottles in his nectar cellar. To my amazement, he completed his lifetime wish of Bottomless Nectar Cellar, which is 10,000 simoleons worth of nectar and at least 50 bottles. I had no idea I’d bought so much, and that was not at all my intention to just buy them, but it worked. He achieved his lifetime wish. Oh well, I still intend to play around a little more with nectar making, but now some of the pressure to make the most expensive bottles is off.

Once home, Alicia decided she wanted to get into better shape to get faster at clearing rubble piles and pushing statutes, so she started jogging with her athletic sister Christy. Christy was full of ideas to help her get into shape.

They jog to the consignment shop every day. I love the consignment shop that came with Ambitions. You just never know what you’re going to find there. Sometimes she finds interesting nectars for Connor. I’ve also gotten in the habit of buying any interesting not of Sim Valley gems available. I have this plan I’m not sure will work of buying the gems, passing them along to a sim in Tommy’s family, having that sim put them up for sale at the consignment shop, and then having Tommy immediately buying them and thus discovering them. It might be a way to get him gems not available in the home neighborhood.

Anyway, a couple of things I was so excited to buy at the consignment shop are a Magical Gnome of Invention and a Little Leon French Gnome! I can’t wait to see what mischief those little guys get up to. If you remember at the beginning of this round Tommy had found my very first ever in game gnome, and in the course of a round I now have five of them! Oh well, they’re going to be fun to watch. Gotta say, though, that inventor gnome looks creepy.

I love visiting other sims’ houses and seeing my other sims out and about. Connor visited the main legacy house and saw Amber trying to comfort a very cranky and lonely Rita Duboise. I guess Daddy Toby and Mommy Allyson were at work, but Amber looks so cute cuddling her niece.

And here’s Christy out jogging with little Elyssa in her arms. Awwwww! Love seeing them. Connor made sure to invite them all to Selene’s birthday party.

Party time! Love seeing all my sim ladies from different houses together like this. Here we have the triplets, Sam’s new wife Holly, and Toby’s wife Allyson. The only adult females missing are Alcide’s wife Frances and Matty’s wife Brenna. I really wish there was some way to get a large group of sims like this to pose for a picture.

Selene Winchester

Perceptive
Disciplined
Athletic
Brave

I’m a little disappointed to see her age to a teen. She was just perfect as a child. She’s still very pretty, but not 100% perfect like she was as a child. And she almost looks like an adult to me, not a teen. She looks a lot like her mother, I think, with the black hair and green eyes. She has her mother’s nose. But she has her father’s fuller face and closer to his darker skin tone.

Accomplishments for this household this round:

Alicia achieved her lifetime want of reaching the top of the medical career.
Connor reached the top of the business career.
Connor achieved his lifetime want of having a bottomless nectar cellar, something I never thought I’d accomplish.
Connor brought back three type of grapes from France and started growing them in his garden so my neighborhood now has a source for them.
Alicia accomplished the Rubble Excavator Skill Challenge.
Connor accomplished the Botanical Boss Skill Challenge.

Accomplishment Tracker

Lifetime Wants Accomplished:

Top of Military Career—Jessie
Raise Six Children from Baby to Teen—Morgana
Perfect Aquarium—Matty
Visionary—Allyson
Have a household net worth of 100,000 simoleons—Brenna
Illustrious Author—Amber
Creature-Robot Cross Breeder—Toby
Superstar Athlete—Alcide
Top of Medical Career—Alicia
Bottomless Nectar Cellar—Connor

Top of Careers Accomplished:

Military—Jessie
Forensics—Morgana
Medical—Matty, Alicia
Rock Music—Brenna
Firefighter—Andres
Business—Connor

Skill Challenges Accomplished:

Athletic—Fitness Nut (Cardio)—Jessie
Athletic—Marathon Runner—Jessie
Athletic—Strong Man (Strength)—Alcide
Charisma—Celebrity—Frances, Allyson, Sookie
Charisma—Personable—Frances, Allyson, Rene, Sookie
Charisma—Super Friendly Sim—Frances
Fishing—Amateur Ichthyologist—Matty
Fishing—Commercial Fisherman—Matty
Gardening—Botanical Boss—Toby, Sam, Connor
Gardening—Master Farmer—Toby
Guitar—Master Guitarist—Brenna
Handiness—Plumber—Jessie, Matty
Handiness—Tinkerer—Jessie
Logic—Celestial Explorer—Alicia
Painting—Proficient Painter—Allyson
Writing—Speed Writer—Amber
World Adventures—Rubble Excavator—Alicia

The other major accomplishment I’m really proud of is that my first ever fourth generation sim was born this round. I played my sims 2 prosperity for years and may still continue it, but playing so many families I only got to generation three born in game. Jessie now has six children, twelve grandchildren, and a great-granddaughter. I’m soooo proud of this.

It seemed like a good idea to look at the family tree. Here’s the in-game one showing my four generations.

That doesn’t really do it for me. I want to see the full family tree. So I made my own. I’m really proud of this too! Click to see it bigger.

The little circles next to their names show their eye colors since that’s hard to see in the picture. I love looking at the genetics. I think my family tree clearly shows the inheriting from grandparents genetics. It’s fascinating to me that all three of Christy’s triplets (Drostan, Elyssa, and Raelin) inherited Jessie’s eye color when that’s only about a 20% chance.

The Werewolves of Baton Rouge—Christy Round 7

2011-01-07T00:01:00.001-05:00

This is the house of one of the triplets, Christy, and her husband Andres. I wanted Christy to have triplets herself, but since I wanted a boy and two girls I decided to have them during separate births so I could control the genders and then just age them together as triplets.

Christy Winchester

Loves the Outdoors
Brave
Athletic
Friendly
Disciplined

LTW—Reach the top of the Special Agent branch of the Law Enforcement career

Andres March Winchester

Easily Impressed
Lucky
Handy
Clumsy (that’s right, Andres the clumsy firefighter, LOL)
Brave

LTW—Rescue 30 sims from fires

Drostan Winchester

Athletic
Brave

I want Drostan to be the brother in a group of ‘triplets’ so you know what means …

And lots and lots of kids music and children’s television channel to ensure twins. And watermelon to make sure they’re girls. Watching the children’s television channel is actually highly entertaining. It makes me laugh every single time I watch it.

In the mean time Andres and Christy are making good career progress. Christy was promoted to Undercover Specialist, level seven. Here’s her in her cute although I’m not sure how’s it’s a police officer outfit.

Andres is already at the top of the firefighter career, but his lifetime want is to save people, so he’s got to fight a lot of fires to save thirty people. He’s currently at 26.

Oh no, not Selene! She’s one of my favorites! Good thing Andres is such a good firefighter. I liked seeing how he saves a child.

Luckily since Andres is at the top of his career he can work from home pretty much all the time. He has to maintain his alarm and fire engine, but it leaves him lots of time to be a good dad and take care of Drostan while Christy is at work.

Christy’s officially pregnant and on maternity leave. This is Christy waking up in the middle of the night to show that she’s pregnant. Umm, yeah.

Christy’s anxious to continue progressing in her career. It seems like maternity leave is forever in sims 3. I liked in sims 2 how after the baby was born you could choose to stay home or choose to go in. But Christy used her maternity leave wisely. She spent the entire time digging through her neighbors’ trash for evidence, interviewing relatives she knew to be criminals, and writing up reports.

Baby time!

At least Christy can get to the hospital quickly. She has her own police escort ;-)

Meet the twin girls that finish off my ‘triplet's’. Here are Christy and Andres bringing home Elyssa and Raelin. Elyssa a few minutes older. Elyssa is in Christy’s arms, and Raelin is in Andres.

Elyssa Winchester

Perceptive
Brave

Raelin Winchester

Brave
Disciplined

So now I’ve officially got my generation three triplets: Drostan, Elyssa, and Raelin.

Babies just age up too quickly. Party time. One of my favorite things is getting all the cousins and aunts and uncles together at parties. Here’s Sookie and Christopher getting to know each other.

Drostan Winchester

Athletic
Brave

Elyssa Winchester

Perceptive
Brave

Raelin Winchester

Brave
Disciplined

And another picture of Raelin:

Note that all three got the custom green Winchester eyes inherited down from Grandpa Jessie, even though Christy has Morgana’s blue eyes. I know there’s a chance to inherit from grandparents, but I find it really interesting that all three inherited the green eyes! Drostan got the custom Jessie/Christy brown hair, and Elyssa and Raelin inherited Andres’ red (I lightened Raelin’s a little bit to make her match my roleplay avatar).

Aren’t they all so beautiful!!! I love them soooo much! Expect lots of pictures of my triplet toddlers. Soooo cute!

Say it together now, awwwwwwww.

Let me just say that teaching toddler skills and caring for triplets is a lot harder than I remembered. I think it’s because at that point in the legacy house I had lots of older brothers and two almost retired adults to help with the triplets. With two sims, one of whom is working, it’s hard work.

Accomplishments this round:

Raising triplets is accomplishment enough, but Andres has saved 26 sims, and Christy is at level 7 in the law enforcement special forces career.