Round 7 Part 4: Whitfill Ranch (2053 - 2057)

Blake Whitfill is 46, Millie is 41, Landon and Ginny are 10.

"Charmed"

narrated by Millie

Sometimes I'm pretty well convinced I lead a charmed life. My husband's music career does take him away from home longer than some other jobs, but when he is home we're able to enjoy him for weeks at a time.

My extended family all live in the area, so my kids get to grow up with cousins and second cousins and first cousins once removed and all that. [Here they are with Andrew Riedmayer, who is technically Millie's first cousin.]

Blake's family is all in town too, and his brothers' kids are all right around our twins in age. [Pictured is Emerson Whitfill.]

Of course, life isn't absolutely perfect--for example, a few years back we had a break-in and the cop let the burglar escape! Fortunately no one was hurt and we could easily afford to replace the things that were stolen.

That was just a few months before the twins had their big milestone birthday--it was so hard for me to believe that my babies were 12 already!

I must admit, we kind of went overboard with their birthday gifts. We had been wanting to renovate the upstairs for a while anyway, so they both got to go all out decorating their rooms.

They were getting too old to be sharing the same room anyhow.

We also got two new puppies--a male named Cullen and a female named Swan. The kids picked their names out; I think they're supposed to be characters from a book or something.

Blake was not happy to get stuck taking the puppies outside in the middle of the night, but I have to get up before dawn to go to the lab and the kids have school, so he did it anyway.

A few months later, Blake was doing a tour in the Far East that coincided with the kids' summer vacation. So we decided to leave the puppies with our siblings (his brother is married to my sister) and go along with him. It was an awesome experience.

The guys both really enjoyed the food. Blake used to be a chef, and Landon has been talking lately about becoming a chef when he's older. I'm not sure if we should take him too seriously, though--I'm pretty sure all 12-year-old boys are obsessed with food!

The kids really enjoyed themselves in general. They'd been talking for years about getting to go on a tour with Daddy, and finally they were old enough to make that dream come true.

I was worried they'd be spoiled by all the leisure time, but once we got home in the fall they threw themselves into their schoolwork again.

Right now Blake's on another tour, so I make sure to sit down and have breakfast with the kids every day before I go to work. (They get themselves on the bus a couple hours later.) Sometimes I quiz them on their homework topics, but other times we just chat about video games or whatever else pops into our heads. I love it no matter what. I might be a little biased, but I'm pretty sure these two are the most awesome kids ever.

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For those of you who still follow this blog and are getting bored, I have a bunch of new posts over at my BACC blog.

Also, here's a cute baby for your inconvenience. He's going to be six months old next week and is almost crawling, so expect posting to remain sporadic as I discover just how not babyproof my apartment is.

Round 7 Part 3: Riedmayer Cove (2053 - 2057)

Jill Smith is 60 years old, Johnson Simpson is 57 years old, Agatha Riedmayer is 33 years old, and Andrew Riedmayer is 2 years old.

"Golden years"
narrated by Johnson Simpson

I never thought, thirty-some years ago, that this is where I'd end up, but life is pretty good. My "grandson," Andrew, turned five a while back.












Agatha is really good with him. Helps him with his homework and stuff, so he can get the best start in life possible.












We managed to get him into private school as well. Jill talked to the headmaster over coffee while I cooked dinner.











Then Agatha spent some time schmoozing him over drinks. I think she got a little tipsy, but apparently it worked since Andrew was accepted.












Now that he's in school all day, things are pretty quiet around here. Jill and I are both still working, though she's got enough time off to take up a pottery-making hobby.











I think she's continuing other hobbies as well, based on the little--and not-so-little--gifts that end up on our front porch. Either that, or Agatha is following in her mother's footsteps. As long as it's not affecting Andrew, I figure it's none of my business.

Administrative notes

1. I've started making profiles for my Sims so I don't have to put their aspirations etc. at the beginning of each post. You can see the ones I've made in the archives for 2001. (Obviously I did not actually write them in 2001.)

2. I also published the family tree online. My one or two regular readers will have to tell me if they can actually view it; I might have to set all the Sims to "dead" so the tree doesn't try to protect their fictional personal information.

3. I won't be doing the "house end of week" pictures anymore. It was fun the first few weeks when everyone was climbing out of poverty, but then I kept it up well past that point. So now I'll just do pictures of new houses or major renovations. If I feel like it.

Now I should go get stuff done IRL so I can work on an actual story post later. (Riedmayer Cove is about 75% done.)

Round 7 Part 2: Dejackome Place (2053-2057)

Melanie Tse: 57 years old. Aspiration: Knowledge. LTW: Max All Skills. (Fulfilled: Become Game Designer.) Astrological sign: Virgo.
Gavin Dejackome: 35 years old. Aspiration: Knowledge. LTW: Become Criminal Mastermind. Astrological sign: Cancer.
Annie (Riedmayer) Dejackome: 32 years old. Aspiration: Popularity. LTW: Become Captain Hero. Astrological sign: Aquarius.
Rivka Dejackome: 3 years old. Astrological sign: Scorpio.

BJ Bigfoot

For a family tree, see this post. The only difference is that Caitlin and Patrick got older, but I didn't take updated screenshots so I can't update the tree anyway.

"One, Two, Three"
narrated by Annie Dejackome

Gavin had to go away on business a few weeks before I was due with the twins, and sure enough, I went into labor the day before he was scheduled to come home. Fortunately, I still had plenty of support. Aunt Mel kept Rivka entertained and out of the way the whole time.

Meanwhile, my dad and my sister Agatha came over to provide support and medical expertise (at least, Dad had a bit of medical expertise). We played lots of chess to pass the time. I think Dad won every game, but of course I was a little distracted.

Finally, the twins were born! First was Melanie Jill, whom we call Lanie. (As you might guess, she's named after Aunt Mel and my aunt Jill, who was like a mother to me growing up.)

The second twin was a boy, Quinton John. (That was my late father's name, but it also honors Dad, who goes by Johnson.)

Gavin had heard that his brother-in-law Donte had made a robot, so not to be outdone, he created Moh. Moh was a little obsessed with the babies, but I guess that's a good thing when you have twin newborns and a preschooler.

Fortunately, Rivka wasn't a preschooler for very long. She's still the spitting image of her father, though as she's gotten older her hair has turned more strawberry blond than true red (and of course her eyes are brown, like mine).

The same year, I finally got my dream job with the SCPD, and before I knew it I had been awarded the prestigious Captain Hero award.

While I was working the twins kept growing, and soon took Riv's place as resident rampaging toddler. (Times two!) Lanie looked pretty much exactly like her sister had at that age.

Quinton looked a bit more like me.

It was very important to Gavin that we get Rivka into Bluewater Academy. I would have liked to wait and do the whole admissions process when the twins were old enough to attend, but Gavin engineered the whole thing, so I let him. I figured Riv would enjoy being in school with all her cousins, anyway.

I must admit, even though they're a lot of work I'm not too eager for the twins to go to school. I'll miss those rare moments when they spend a quiet morning coloring at their activity table, being all tiny and cute everything. But that's how it goes, isn't it? You close your eyes and when you open them again everyone's grown a little older and all sorts of things have changed.

And here's the house at the end of the week. I feel like I need to scrap the whole thing and make it fresh at some point, because it has an awkward layout after being added onto many times. 

I am more pleased with the outside--it took a very long time to get the roof just right.

Notes:

1. All the adults got secondary aspirations this round...Melanie and Annie got Family (yay Comfort Soup!) and Gavin got Romance, which could spell trouble. I guess we'll see.

2. I don't know what Annie's new LTW is now that she's a Captain Hero. I'll have to look it up when I play them next.

Nooboo!

The return of Prosperity Plains, heralded in my last post, was not much of a return, was it?

I do not have much excuse for June through November, but for the last two months I have had this excuse:

He came three weeks early, and we hadn't exactly finished setting up for him, so the first few weeks were very crazy. Now things have settled down and I have learned how to play Sims and  blog while feeding the baby, so perhaps new posts will appear. I make no promises, however. I learned my lesson about those. :)

The Return of Prosperity Plains

So, did anybody miss me?

During April and May, I was sick on account of being pregnant. Then during June I've STILL been sick on account of being pregnant (second trimester does not live up to its reputation...) and I've started a BACC. It's a lot easier in terms of rules--I only have to check my print-out when I want my Sims to apply for jobs--but harder in terms of math. My BACC Sims will probably never hire a maid simply because I won't be able to figure out when the population is high enough.

Anyway, I have a so-far empty blog for that here, and I'm hoping to be posting more over on this blog. I've got a good 10 lots that I've played but not blogged, and I'm going to try to get through Round 7 at least by December, at which point I will have other things occupying my time. (BABY.)

Right now I need to get off the computer and go do laundry, though, so more later.