Week Three Part Five: Riedmayer-Landgraab Estate

Francine left for college not long after the twins graduated. Almost as soon as she was gone, Millie began agitating for private school. Beata didn't want the extra work of schmoozing the headmaster, but Malcolm thought that it would be in the best interests of their children to attend private school instead of public.

The first attempt to get Millie and Mal in was met with abject failure. Perhaps it was the fire truck on the street as the headmaster pulled up (Beata had burned the chili); perhaps it was the fact that Malcolm greeted the headmaster in his pajama pants.

The second attempt worked, however; even little Marion (who was only in first grade) got in; that fall all three Landgraab children were proud to don their uniforms.










Meanwhile, Beata was astonished to discover that she was expecting again. Although she and Malcolm had wanted a brother for little Mal since right after he was born, after it took several years to conceive Marion they had decided that three children were enough and Beata would focus on her career.







However, when Marion was five they found themselves welcoming another daughter, whom they named Margaret.











Millie was perfectly happy to step into the role of caring big sister while Beata attempted to get back in shape so she could continue to pursue her dream of becoming a general.
























Not long afterwards, Beata celebrated her fiftieth birthday and stopped coloring her hair, which had long ago turned from blond to white under the stresses of raising seven children. She wasn't looking forward to the "grandma" comments when out with Margaret or even Marion (both still in elementary school), but she also did have two grandchildren and figured she ought to start looking the part. Malcolm, 3 years Beata's junior and without biological grandchildren, staunchly refused to give up his Just For Men dye.



Shortly before Maggie was born, Mal had celebrated his 13th birthday. Given how studious both Francine and Millie were, Mal's parents were surprised to discover as the years went on that he took after his mother, preferring hanging out with friends to studying. He quickly became head of the student newspaper at his private school and made it his business to know everything about everybody.

Malcolm Landgraab V
son of Beata Riedmayer-Landgraab
and Malcolm Landgraab IV
Aspiration: Popularity
Lifetime Want: Become Media Magnate
Astrological sign: Gemini

He especially liked getting to know Theresa Dejackome, a redheaded beauty from across town.











His parents and bossy big sister made sure he applied himself to his studies, though.












This is what the Landgraab house looked like at the end of the week. The cribs are gone from the master bedroom, they have two cars, and the girls are still all obsessed with playing chess. (You can see Marion at the chess table in her nightgown.)








This is the second floor. Note that I put an addition over the master bedroom and moved the girls there, putting a TV and whatnot in their old bedroom. I don't think I ever bought a third princess bed, since Millie left for college pretty much immediately after Maggie aged up to child.








The exterior, which looks almost exactly the same even with the addition.

Not much to report here. Pretty much everything I wrote in the paragraph about Maggie's conception was actually true. I had Beata and Malcolm "try for baby" left and right after little Mal was born, and it didn't work until a few days later, which in Sim-time is a very long time. It wore me out, so I decided they were done. Then one day shortly after Marion was born they were in a good mood and I thought "Why not?" and sent them to bed to try for baby, more to help keep their relationship up than because I thought it'd actually work. And it worked on the first try. This all happened at the end of Week Four, but I transferred it to the beginning of Week Five because I write as if 1 day equaled 1 year and being pregnant for three years just isn't normal.

Week Three Part Four: Whitfill Ranch

Larita had a dream of seeing all her kids through college. To that end, she sent the three boys all off to Sim State while they were still teenagers--18, 17, and 16, to be precise. Jihoon, who was the youngest and who had always been particularly close to his mother, was reluctant to go, but Larita told him he'd do better with his older brothers to look after him and she'd be fine with the twins helping her out around the house.

So they hopped in the taxi, one by one.









































Sadly, Larita didn't live to see their college graduation. She died of a heart attack near the end of their sophomore year.

(I could have given Larita a shot of elixir to get her to the end of the week, but I decided that she'd already had more time than she really ought, what with the genie lamp and all. So I didn't try for the "CAS elder gets Lifetime Want" bonus.)




By then, the twins were legal adults, so they ordered their brothers back to college, reassuring them that they would handle everything back at the ranch.

The first thing they did with the life insurance settlement was order a tombstone for Larita and some trees and flowers for her grave.






Then the twins made some more frivolous purchases. The first was a new car...green, since that had always been Larita's favorite color.











Then the twins drove their new car into town and bought some new clothes--their first sets of new clothes ever; until then they'd subsisted on consignment shop finds.










After that they settled into a routine. They went to school, hung out for about an hour, went to their after school jobs, did their homework and worked on earning as many scholarships as possible so they could fulfill their mother's dream of all her children graduating from college.








They missed their mother and brothers most at night, so they happily continued to share a double bed rather than buying new singles.











They missed their brothers the most one night when a burglar broke into their house.

(Rishell and Veronia were furious at the burglar for DAYS. Seriously, they couldn't get a thing done without stomping their feet and thinking of him angrily.)







Fortunately, their security system altered the on-duty police officer, who arrived in time to catch the burglar and haul him off to her squad car. The twins decided that it wasn't necessary to call their brothers after all...they had enough to worry about with finals coming up.








This is what the downstairs looked like at the end of the week. Notice that the kitchen stuff is actually in the tiled area. There's a couch dividing the tile from the carpet (you probably can't see it from behind the stairs) and a new TV. Plus the bookcase is nicer than it used to be.








This is the upstairs, where we store stuff we don't need on a daily basis--the spare bed and the dresser.











This is the very boring exterior.

Week Three Part Three: Riedmayer Cove

In what seemed like only a matter of days, Agatha was in school. Johnson often helped her with her homework. Agatha called Jill "Mom" and Jack "Uncle Jack", logically enough, but she took to calling Johnson "Dad." Johnson certainly didn't mind, and Jill said she didn't either. After all, Agatha had been hardly more than a baby when her biological father died.






Noticing Johnson's obvious love for the girls, Jack began to get the strangest ideas. One day, he surprised Johnson with a proposal; they entered into a civil union right there in the yard. (Note: The game itself calls same-sex marriages "joining," so I figure Sim City has some kind of civil union policy.) Johnson was surprised but pleased. Jack worried he was making a mistake, but figured it was too late to turn back now.





Almost immediately after the commitment ceremony, Jack suggested that they apply to be foster parents. They did so, and the next thing they knew a little girl named Annie showed up on their doorstep. They adopted her about a year later, giving her the last name Riedmayer.








Johnson loved having Annie around, so much so that two years later he surprised Jack by accepting a second foster placement, a little girl named Gretchen. (She took the last name Riedmayer as well.)









Jack began to feel a little overwhelmed by domesticity, so he took to spending most hours of the day painting while Johnson and Jill took care of the FOUR little girls running around. Annie and Gretchen took their cues from Jill's daughters and began referring to the various adults as "Mom" "Uncle Jack" and "Dad." In spite of himself, Jack became rather fond of the girls.






Not very long after Gretchen's adoption was finalized, Jack was on his way to visit his brother's gravestone when he collapsed himself. Jill, a paramedic, determined that he died instantly.

(Despite a LOT of work on my part, Jack died in gold aspiration. Loser.)

Jill naturally assumed that Johnson would want to move on after Jack's death, but Johnson insisted that he'd like to stay if Jill would let him. (Jill was trustee of the Riedmayer estate on behalf of her daughters, and therefore had a right to dictate who lived in the house.) Jill agreed, and the two of them settled into raising their daughters together. (But with an entirely platonic relationship themselves. Seriously, I have never known two Sims more indifferent to each other.)

Johnson decided that it would be in the girls' best interests to get into private school, but his first attempt to get them admitted failed. Johnson was so upset by this that he needed therapy. (No doubt, there was still some lingering grief as a result of Jack's death that he needed to work through.)







The second attempt proved successful--perhaps because Jill charmed the headmaster over coffee--and all four girls were admitted to private school. Life was looking up for the unconventional little family.









This is what the first floor looked like at the end of the week. On the left you can see a bathroom (or at least the bathtub), then eat-in kitchen, living room, and Jill's bedroom.










This is what the second floor looked like: Another bathroom, a room shared by all four girls, and Johnson's room. (I really should have swapped the two rooms, since Johnson doesn't need all that space to himself. Oh well.)









This is what the exterior looked like. Take note of the fact that I've tiered the sloping yard and built a set of stairs from the patio to street level.











At some point during this week of gameplay, I happened to look in Johnson's inventory and found a TON of stuff. Behold. (The truck was not in there, nor were the tombstones. That area just happened to be the largest flat spot.)









This is the stuff they actually kept. (I think two of the blue vases were already there, but the other flowers around the graves are from Johnson's inventory.)

Week Three Part Two: Dejackome Place

When she first moved in with Rivka, Melanie had gotten a job in a music store to help make ends meet; not long after an opening as a professional gamer came up and Melanie leapt on it, hoping to realize her dream of becoming a game designer. As her income grew, she improved the little house.

Next thing Melanie knew, Gretchen and Jeannie were turning 13. She realized that the girls were getting closer and closer to college and decided it was time to try to get them into private school. Surely Rivka would have wanted them to have the best education possible. So the headmaster was invited and much to everyone's surprise was impressed by their small but well-kept house. All four children went to school the next fall looking very sharp in their new uniforms.

Gretchen Dejackome, daughter of Rivka Dejackome

Aspiration: Knowledge
Lifetime Want: Become Criminal Mastermind
Astrological sign: Aries

Jeannie Dejackome, daughter of Rivka Dejackome

Aspiration: Knowledge
Lifetime want: Become Head of SCIA
Astrological sign: Aquarius

Gavin and Theresa

Theresa, Jeannie, and Gretchen. Notice that Gretchen grew out her hair.

It wasn't long before it was time for Gavin and Theresa to turn 13 as well, putting Melanie in charge of four teenagers.

Gavin Dejackome, son of Rivka Dejackome
Aspiration: Knowledge
Lifetime want: Become Criminal Mastermind
Astrological sign: Cancer















Theresa Dejackome, daughter of Rivka Dejackome
Aspiration: Romance
Lifetime want: Become Celebrity Chef
Astrological sign: Libra

After that milestone, things settled into a placid routine at Dejackome Place. The eldest three children seemed as fascinated by their studies as Melanie. Theresa was not such a scholar, preferring to flirt with boys during math class, but she gained skills too under the guidance of her siblings and "Auntie" Melanie.

This is what the Dejackome house looked like at the end of the week. Three bedrooms, one bathroom, a dining room and kitchen and living room. That little room to the right that leads to the garage doesn't have a purpose yet. Especially since I didn't figure out how to build the garage. (Stay tuned for that one.)







The exterior. I think this is a really cute little house.

The Dejackomes are one of my favorite families. It didn't hurt that they bore the brunt of my die's streak of 2's. (Of the 19 members of Generation 2 who are old enough to have aspirations, 7 are Knowledge. That's more than twice what it should be, statistically speaking.) Although Theresa has a relatively harmless lifetime want (and is therefore less loathsome to me than most Romance Sims), I'm planning to reroll her aspiration when she gets to college. I'm half-hoping that she'll round out my family of nerds here.

Week Three Part One: Kules Korner

Darius left for college when he was in his mid-twenties, very near the maximum age for full-time admittance.











After he left, Brittanie remembered that Jaden existed. She definitely didn't feel like taking care of the kid herself, so she bit the bullet, inviting Ryan over and informing him that he had a son. Ryan, naturally, immediately wanted to move in and help take care of the boy. Brittanie let him, and was soon glad to discover that Ryan was too busy burying his nose in a book to pay much mind to her...extracurricular activities. (Ryan is a Knowledge Sim with the lifetime want to become a prestidigitator. I don't remember his astrological sign.)
















Brittanie was still working, doing video editing. One day she showed her boss a life-changing video of some rabbits and he bequeathed her his entire fortune and went to live in the wild. Or something. Brittanie didn't really care. She just cared that she had enough money to bulldoze her old, dinky house and build a swanky new one.







Around the time Jaden started kindgergarten (or was it first grade? Brittanie wasn't really paying attention), Brittanie was dismayed to discover that she was pregnant again. She really needed to get better birth control. To make things worse, she'd been with some guys besides Ryan recently and couldn't be sure the baby was his.







A few months later, a baby girl was born. Brittanie named her Alexis, noted with relief that she looked just like Jaden (meaning she had been fathered by dark-complexioned Ryan and not by blond-haired what's-his-name), and promptly forgot that she existed.








Meanwhile, Ryan took time out from his own studies to help Jaden with his homework. Although he loved Brittanie, he noticed that she seemed perfectly content with her low level of education (she'd barely graduated high school) and he wanted his son to go to college and have opportunities he'd never had.







This is what the Kules house looked like at the end of the week. The exterior is loosely designed on a picture I saw somewhere on the interwebs. Unfortunately, Sims 2 furniture isn't really intended for slanty walls. I make it work, though.









This is the exterior of the house. Originally I was upset that the roof looked like that, but then I decided it was cool and funky. Or something.

I'm really glad I brought Ryan into the neighborhood, even thought it cramps Brittanie's Romance-Sim style. This way, I get to cast her as the villian and Ryan and the kids as victims. If she was the only one living here, she'd have to be the hero of the story and I just dislike her too much for that. (I'm a shameless Romance Sim hater. Also, I love Knowledge Sims to pieces even though they're boring by themselves.)