Week Six Part Two: Dejackome Place

Melanie Tse: 50 years old. Aspiration: Knowledge. LTW: Max All Skills. (Fulfilled: Become Game Designer.) Astrological sign: Virgo.
Gavin Dejackome: 28 years old. Aspiration: Knowledge. LTW: Become Criminal Mastermind. Astrological sign: Cancer.
Annie Riedmayer: 25 years old. Aspiration: Popularity. LTW: Become Captain Hero. Astrological sign: Aquarius.

For complete family trees, please see the college update. For now, a quick recap:
Gavin is the only son of founder Rivka Dejackome, so of course he has returned to his childhood home after college.
Annie Riedmayer is the elder of Quinton Riedmayer's two daughters, and thus a member of the far smaller second branch of the massive Riedmayer family (the other branch containing Elwood's numerous descendants). She is Gavin's fiancee and thus came with him after college rather than moving back to her own childhood home.
Melanie Tse was close friends with the late Rivka Dejackome and became a live-in nanny to the children, which was fortunate since Rivka died before any of them became teens. She also served as placeholder while Gavin was away at college. 
Since the prosperity challenge rules dictate that college graduates can move in with a) a relative (or maybe just a parent?) or b) a best friend, and since Melanie is not actually Gavin's relative, I made sure that they remained BFFs throughout his college years. Gavin moved in with his BFF Melanie, and then Annie was able to move in with her BFF Gavin. 

"Role Reversal"

Narrated by Melanie Tse

Gavin and Annie ended up being able to leave Sim City earlier than they thought, so they arrived about half an hour after I left for work. (I'm a substitute teacher.) When they arrived, they were apparently terrified that I was lying dead or injured somewhere because the yard looked so terrible...old newspapers piled up, weeds everywhere...After they checked the house and didn't see me, they got to work cleaning things up, even though it was raining fairly hard at the time.

As soon as I reassured them that I was not dead, they started planning their wedding. It was held early the following year: Saturday, February 9, 2047.

They are a lovely couple, obviously very devoted, and I knew that they would be very happy together.

They also have a sense of humor, which is always important in a marriage.

This might sound crazy, but I had the strangest feeling that Rivka was somehow watching the wedding herself, from wherever she is now.

Outtake: I can only invite 5 or 6 people using the "Throw Party" option, so I did a regular "Call > Invite Over" for several guests. Some asked if they could bring friends and I thought, "Why not? The more, the merrier!"

This is why not. I didn't see what led up to this slap-fest, but I'm assuming Theresa interacted romantically with her fiance, Malcolm (they're three-bolt lovers and can't keep their hands off each other), and Dog Face there got mad because he thought the one-time fling he had with Theresa when she was at college actually MEANT something.

Since money was a bit tight, Gavin and Annie decided to go to Three Lakes for their honeymoon--it's just a couple of days' drive away, or a very short flight. We ended up flying because Gavin didn't think my old bones could handle that much time in the car. Yes, he insisted that his old auntie come along on his honeymoon. I expected Annie to object, but she was all for it. I decided to be flattered rather than insulted, though I suspect they secretly think I'm a child and can't be left home alone for a week.

We managed to rent a lovely two-bedroom cabin, just right for the three of us.

I probably could have spent a whole week just relaxing in the cabin, but we did take in some local sights. Annie was much better than I at the log rolling thing...

I got the hang of slap dancing pretty quickly, though.

I must admit, though, that my favorite thing about Three Lakes was the deep tissue massage.

Gavin and Annie said that their favorite part was the sauna.

We had heard from Jeannie about the Bigfoot...excuse me, Sasquatch...oppression that went on in Three Lakes. When we met Christian there, of course we had to apply to have him move back to Prosperity Plains with us. Our application was accepted, and he moved in with us and took over Gavin's old bed. (Not Gavin's old room, though, since we'd renovated after Gavin and Annie moved back.)

For some reason, Gavin and Annie weren't able to find jobs in their desired fields right away. I had a job as a substitute teacher, so I managed to support us all right during that period, but it was difficult. (Christian couldn't find a job either. He wanted to get into education so that he could teach future generations the truth about Sasquatches.)

Annie spent most of her time networking, hoping one of her many friends would be able to give her some help. Gavin worked on honing his skills so he could impress potential employers.

Gavin finally got a job with Malcolm Landgraab's imports business in late 2049. He seems to enjoy it very much.

With our income newly increased, Gavin and Annie felt free to try for a baby and were immediately successful.

(Annie actually got pregnant long before that--I think on the honeymoon--but again, I am trying to make Sim-pregnancies seem realistic lengths.)

Their daughter was born on October 25, 2050. They named her Rivka Anne Dejackome. She ended up with her mother's brown eyes and her father's red hair; it made her look a great deal like her aunt Theresa.








After little Rivka was born, Gavin decided to get back in shape. He had put on a bit of weight in college and I think he was self-conscious about it. It was a little funny that Annie had no trouble losing her baby weight but Gavin was working so hard on losing his after the baby.

Gavin had 8 or 9 body points the whole time he was fat, and now he has 10, so he'd better not get fat again--especially since he has only about one bolt with Annie and she is turned off by fatness.

Gavin helped me lose some weight too; I'd put on quite a few pounds over the years without really realizing it.











Christian managed to get a job lecturing at a university, but Annie still hadn't managed to find a job in law enforcement. So she was a stay-at-home mother to Rivka while the rest of us worked outside the home. Before we knew it, Rivka was a beautiful little toddler. I think I see more of her father in her as she grows, but it's hard to tell at her age.

Annie and Gavin both wanted a fairly large family, and they decided that since Annie was at home anyway she might as well have another child, so that she would not want to go on maternity leave as soon as she got a job. However, it took some time for her to conceive the second time. She found out she was pregnant again shortly before little Rivka turned 3 years old.

Annie's second pregnancy was very different from her first. She was hungry all the time and craved rich foods like cheesecake. When she was about 4 months along she found out that she is having twins! I suppose that explains it; growing two babies requires more food than growing one. We're all looking forward to their arrival early next spring.

This is the house at the end of the week. Everything to the left of the flowerbed is new, and the bedroom portion inside is extensively renovated. Melanie has her own double bed in the back bedroom there, and then Gavin and Annie and Rivka all share the largest front bedroom for now. Then there's the study, Christian's room, and an empty room. (The pink bed used to be Theresa's; no sense getting rid of it when Rivka will need one of her own soon.)

Once they have a little more money, I will probably bump out the kitchen/dining/living area to be level with Melanie's room, just because I like my Sims to have plenty of room to maneuver.

And here is the outside. It looks a little funny, but I still like it. I spent quite a while getting the roof just right, since the wall bumps out one space there to the left of the flowerbed.

Other than job woes, this week was pretty boring for the Dejackome/Tse/Bigfoot household.. Next week we get to find out whether one of Annie's twins will be the Generation 3 Dejackome heir or whether she will have to try again. (I haven't started playing Week 7 yet, because real life has gotten in the way, so I don't know any more than you do!)

(If Annie and Gavin don't have a boy in their third pregnancy, I will let them stop and just have one of the girls be heir.)

A small announcement, a minor correction, and a very large piece of evidence supporting my hopeless nerdiness

First, the announcement: Starting in Week 7, I am going to shorten my rounds to 3-4 days instead of 7. So, the next Kules update will be "Week 7 Part 1.0", covering Monday morning to Friday morning, and then "Week 7 Part 1.5", covering Friday morning to Monday morning.

I could do Monday 8 a.m. to Thursday 8 p.m. if I wanted to be even, but my Sims are often in the middle of birthday parties and such at 8 p.m., whereas at 8 a.m. there is less going on. (I long ago developed the habit of pausing as soon as a lot loads and sending all children to school immediately.)

I am motivated to do this partly because a round takes SO LONG that I get bored and start to forget what happened in the early houses and such; cutting the time spent at each house in half will enable me to cycle through them more quickly and hopefully keep things fresh.

I also did it to keep my neighborhood more in sync; a week is actually a really long time when you're a Sim. It was having a negative impact on friendships among kids from my 'hood; children are only children for a week so it is hard to have a back-and-forth friendship; teens are sometimes teens for only four days. It makes dating really difficult. For example, say you have a child in House #1 who ages up to teen on Tuesday night and thus will be going to college the following Monday morning. All her peers in the other houses on the playlist are children and will remain children as long as I'm playing her house. She will still be a teen after I leave the house (I send them off as soon as I load their house again on Monday morning) but if her intended life-mate grows up to teen on Thursday night in his own house that gives them only one weekend together instead of the two they would have gotten if they had been aging more in sync. (Well, they still would have only gotten the one weekend, but they would have gotten to live it twice over, once in each house.)

That also brings me to college...if Girl Sim grows up on Tuesday night, she will be "17 years old" by my reckoning the following Monday and therefore eligible to go to college. Boy Sim, having grown up Thursday night, will only be 15 and thus will not be eligible for college until a full week later, when he is 22. So Girl Sim and Boy Sim will not be able to marry until a full week after that, when he is 29 and she is 31.

Under the new system, Girl Sim will grow up on Tuesday night and then I will leave her house on Friday morning. Boy Sim will grow up on Thursday night and I will leave his house Friday morning. Then back at Girl Sim's house she will get to spend the whole weekend with her beloved and then he will get to spend the whole weekend with her at his house. She will still leave him behind when she goes to college on Monday (boohoo), but he will leave for college on Friday and join her when she is a junior and he a freshman.

"Wait, what's that about leaving for college on Friday?" you say. "I don't remember you mentioning that!"

That's because I didn't yet. As part of this new system, I will be doing two college "calls." Monday morning, everyone who is at least 16 years old will get packed off to college. I will play them through their first two years. Friday morning, everyone who is at least 16 years old will get packed off to college. They will get played through their first two years and the other batch will get played through to graduation. After one round of this, it will mean that nobody is older than 19 or 20 when they go to college, and a range of 16-20 seems more realistic than a range of 16-22, without having to send every single Sim the year they turn 18 and having chaos.

(They will be between the ages of 23 and 27 when they graduate, which might seem weird, but I decided to do it that way because Sim college always seems like college + grad school to me, what with them graduating and immediately becoming General Practitioners and such.)

This will have the side-effect of eliminating the need for townie placeholders, since there will be a batch going Monday-Monday and a batch going Friday-Friday. Unless I have a baby drought, but I don't see that happening any time soon.

The only negative effect will be on students who want to move out and found new lots. See, if they leave on Friday and graduate a "week" later, it will be Friday for everyone else in the 'hood, but on the new lot it will be Monday. I refuse to allow that sort of discrepancy. So for the time being I am going to say that any Sim who is not permanently moving back with parents or moving in with a significant other has to temporarily move in with a sibling or friend or some such person who has a properly synced lot. 10 days later, they can move out on their own. (10 days and not 3 because part of the challenge rules says that college grads have to stay in their first post-college household for at least 7 days.)

You are probably hopelessly confused, dear reader, so I will give you a pretty picture to make you feel better.

Clicking on that should enlarge it. I made it this morning; it is an index of every playable Sim in the neighborhood, unless I am forgetting somebody. (68 living, 4 dead.) Someday I hope to have all sorts of interesting information in here, but right now it just has names and birthdates.

Right now they are sorted from youngest to oldest, except Ryker who has 0/0/0000 as his birthdate because I couldn't be bothered with giving him a real birthdate. The kids who have birthdates like 0/0/2053 are babies/toddlers and I would have to check in game to know exactly how old they are and then randomly generate a birthday for them. (Actually, with the babies I would have to wait until they become toddlers to know how many days old they are.) I don't have time for that at the moment (too busy making spreadsheets), so they have placeholder birthdates.

Then they are color-coded by when they are going to college. The Pinks are going to college at the beginning of Round 7. Most of them are currently frozen in time with their hands on the telephone waiting to call as soon as I reload their lots. There are 5 of them, which is a nice number, and they even have a good boy/girl ratio. (Their aspirations are respectively Family, Romance, Pleasure, Pleasure, and Popularity, though, so I have a feeling there will be more socializing than studying.)

Orange and Yellow would have all gone to college at the beginning of Week 8 according to the old system. There are FOURTEEN Sims in those two color categories. FOURTEEN. That is way too many to have in college at all, but if I stagger them at least I will only have to deal with 14 students for half a round rather than a full round...though before and after I will have 12 students total (Pink and Orange together, and then Yellow and Green together.) 

Blue and Purple are both more modest and will probably remain so, though if Joan Pons can convince her husband to adopt 3 more children (to meet her impossible want of 10) there might be 1 or 2 more Blues and 1 or 2 more Purples. I also have a pregnant Sim who has been eating cheesecake like it's going out of style, so I anticipate another set of twins in 2054 (just in time for the Purples). 

A couple of quick notes, and then I have to go cook dinner like a normal person:

1. Age is calculated for Sims kind of like it is for Thoroughbred horses: They "age up" on January 1. So, for example, Emmy Whitfill's random meaningless birthday is December 20, 2042. This means that on January 1, 2043, she was considered to be "1 year old." She is only about 6 weeks older than Landon and Ginny Whitfill, but they will always be listed as 1 year apart in age. Fortunately, Emmy will be "eighteen" years old when she goes to college, which makes her 17 1/2. The youngest Sim to attend college for the forseeable future will be Charles Riedmayer, who will turn 16 in September 2057, right around when he leaves for college. (I imagine them going to college sometime between July and September, depending on if they call the taxi before or after school.)

2. I realized when making this spreadsheet that I grossly miscalculated Caitlin and Patrick Seifert's birthdays, originally listed as being in 2033 and 2036. I calculated it out and realized I probably meant to write 2043 and 2046, so birthdates have been updated accordingly in the spreadsheet and in their family's update. 

Week Six Part One: Kules Korner

Brittanie Kules: 65 years old. Aspiration: Romance. LTW: Woohoo 20 Different Sims. (Fulfilled: Have 20 Simultaneous Lovers.) Astrological sign: Aries.

Ryan Cho: 53 years old. Aspiration: Knowledge. LTW: Become Prestidigitator. Astrological sign: Virgo.

Darius Kules: 47 years old. Aspiration: Fortune. LTW: Earn $100,000. Astrological sign: Aquarius.

Elise Kules: 47 years old. Aspiration: Popularity. LTW: Become Hall of Famer. Astrological sign: Leo.

Jaden Kules: 22 years old. Aspiration: Knowledge. LTW: Become Space Pirate. Astrological sign: Scorpio.

Alexis Kules: 15 years old. Aspiration: Family. LTW: Reach Golden Anniversary. Astrological sign: Scorpio.

Silas Kules: 8 years old. Astrological sign: Sagittarius

Priscilla Kules: 4 years old. Astrological sign: Sagittarius

The Kules family is the smallest in Prosperity Plains and they have not intermarried with the other families yet, so their family tree is very simple.

"The Impossible Want"

Narrated by Ryan Cho

In 2046, my son, Jaden, finally left for college. He was 22 years old, but the college only admits students from our town certain years and he was only 15 during the last round of recruitment, too young for college.

He was delighted to go, since he is a great lover of knowledge, and I was delighted to see him go. I'd never had the chance to attend college myself and now I'm far too old. I do make sure to continue to expand my mind with reading and things of that sort. I admit that, happy as I was to see him go, I missed Jaden's company during my study sessions. We're like iron sharpening iron, my son and I.

I recruited my daughter, Alexis, as my new study companion during those years. She is less academically minded than Jaden and has often said that she just wants to find a nice man and settle down. I always tell her that a person makes a better spouse and parent if their mind is expanded with knowledge.

(I promise Alexis does have clothes, by the way Apparently she just likes pajamas.)

I didn't spend all my time studying with Alexis, though. When everybody else was at work or school, I would babysit my granddaughter, Priscilla. Well, she is not exactly my granddaughter, but that's how we see it. I don't think I could dote on her any more if she was my blood descendant, and she seems to be very fond of me in return.

I was almost sad when she was old enough to go to school.

(She's pretty cute, isn't she?)

Her father, Darius, was usually the one to help her with her homework--she didn't have much at that age, so it was something they could do together after he got home from work late in the evening.

Darius also taught Priscilla how to play video games. I'm not much of a gamer myself, but Darius is really into that sort of thing and it seems to be a good way for him to bond with his children.

At the time, Darius was working as a director for a movie studio in Sim City. Unfortunately, he had to leave right before the kids got home from school and often wasn't back until after their bedtime. So he made sure to get up and have breakfast with them before they went to school.

Soon after Priscilla started school, the kids fell into a routine of playing video games together after school to relax a little bit before tackling their homework.

Other times, we'd find them together in Silas' room, painting and coloring pictures.

I guess that a 4-year age difference is less of an issue when you are 10 and 6 than it is when you are 6 and 2. My own children are 7 years apart and, although they got along fine, they never really had common interests and activities until Alexis was 12 or 13, at which point Jaden was almost ready to leave for college.

Silas and Priscilla were both doing well in school, but Darius and Elise felt they would be happier and have better opportunities in private school. Since Darius was at work when the headmaster came for the interview, I helped out by cooking dinner while Elise sat down and chatted with the headmaster over coffee.

Silas was curious and decided to join us for Lobster Thermidor; Priscilla was already asleep.

The headmaster was suitably impressed with the family and admitted both children to the school.

The next morning, Alexis kept Priscilla occupied with a breakfast of leftover lobster and tales of how exciting traveling on an airplane would be. Considering that Alexis had never been on an airplane herself, I think there was a lot of creative license going on.

Just before sunrise, we caught a shuttle to the airport and then flew to Takemizu Village. Not one of us had ever been out of the country, or even the state, and we could well afford a vacation, so we went, picking up Jaden in Sim City on the way.

We got four suites in a very nice hotel with an in-house restaurant. Brittanie and I shared one of the queen suites, Darius and Elise shared another. Then the boys took a suite with two twins, and the girls took another.

(This hotel--I think it's The Flaming Dragon?--is the only Far East hotel lot I'll use. The waitress from the restaurant will actually come into your room and wash dishes, which is more than the maid ever does. Stupid maid.)

There was a pond surrounding the hotel with fish; ironically enough, we spent a good deal of our vacation fishing in that pond. (Ironic because, of course, we could have fished in the park in Bluewater Village just as easily and saved on plane fare.) Once or twice I caught Alexis and Brittanie actually talking to each other out there. My daughter and her mother are two very different women, and their relationship hasn't been good since Alexis was Priscilla's age. They still don't understand each other very well, but I think that vacation really helped them connect and put the past behind them.

Most of the time, all of us were going in about six different directions. But there was one night when all eight of us hiked out to this isolated pagoda and listened to an elderly man recite local legends. It was an amazing experience, and as we all sat there together, for a second we felt like...well, like a real family. I know that probably sounds ridiculous; "real" families are what they are, not this Leave it to Beaver togetherness thing. Still, it was something else.

About two days later, I managed to track down this "ninja" guy who was supposed to be able to teach people stealth or something. It's a total tourist trap, but it didn't cost money and I had time to kill, so I approached him when he made this big show of sneaking around behind a building.

Anyway, he said that before he could teach me stealth I had to answer a question. He asked me which was more important, wisdom or courage, and of course I said wisdom. He said primly that a sharp mind is nothing without a stout heart, or something along those lines, and made a big show of sneaking off again.

There was also this wishing well that had glowing lights and a spooky recorded voice to fool gullible tourists. It gave the most general fortunes, too...it told Brittanie that she would have to make a choice (you make a choice every day when you fix yourself breakfast; that's not news) and told Darius that he would have success in his chosen career.

Granted, within a year of our return Darius made a gamble that paid off big. See, he was directing a movie and the star quit. A lot of Darius' friends in the industry were pushing him to act in the role himself, but he was 50 by then and thought it would violate the integrity of the movie to cast himself in the lead role, which was written for a much younger man. So he recruited an untried 20-something actor and the movie was a runaway hit. Darius' cut of the profits was massive; it made him one of the richest men in the country.

In other words, Darius got a chance card which led to the fulfillment of his lifetime want, which was also the Fortune impossible want. His new LTW is "Own 5 Top-Level Businesses," because he wants to kill me.

Just a few months after that, Darius got a star on the Walk Of Fame for his work as an actor and director.

And TOC #1! I am pretty sure all of those things happened on the same day.

At that point Darius could easily have retired and rested on his laurels, and none of us would have said that he hadn't done his bit to support our big crazy household. But it's not in Darius' nature to rest on his laurels...I think he always remembers the poverty he lived through as a child and can never quite feel sure that he's earned enough to stop his children from ever having to experience it.

So he switched from acting to law. I'm not sure how he managed that...I guess they were impressed by his charisma. Anyway, he had a podium where he would stand and practice his cases; when he was at work Priscilla would pretend to be practicing cases herself. Darius seemed to enjoy that; he said she probably could be a lawyer someday, the way she argued about bedtime.

Meanwhile, I had spent the last 35 years working in bars and clubs. First I was a bartender; then when Jaden was little I got into entertainment...magic tricks and the like, not that kind of nightclub entertainment.

It was good work, and I found my success very fulfilling, but one day it just didn't seem like I was supposed to be there any more. I wanted to do something a little more...well, a little more intellectual. I figured that if somebody could go from being an actor to being a lawyer at 50, somebody else could go from being a magician to being an oceanographer at 56.

I got the very first job to which I applied. Maybe a little of Darius' wishing-well luck rubbed off on me.

TOC #1 for Ryan! New LTW: Become Hand of Poseidon. He did manage to snag an oceanography job, so we'll see if he can manage TOC #2.

Darius also started saying that he wanted to use some of the giant wads of cash we had lying around to start his own businesses...not only would it be a smart investment, but we could give back to the community by establishing things they need.

Darius and Elise both started learning how to make certain kinds of electronics; these electronics are so fragile that they can't be shipped very far at all. You can't even buy them in Sim City, much less Bluewater.

I found out during this play session that Elise has silver badges in Robotics and Restocking. I've never done either of those things with her, so she must have been an OFB townie. Note to Simmers: That black-haired teen in the pink shirt and denim skirt is potentially useful!

Meanwhile, Darius started learning how to fix up old cars. Cars you can buy wholesale from Japanese manufacturers, but Darius thought that Kules Kustom Kars had a nice ring to it. I will never understand his and Brittanie's obsession with ungrammatical K's, but I suppose he's a grown man and can name his business whatever he wants.

Even Brittanie took an interest in Darius' entrepreneurial endeavors. She got this mail-order table thing, set it up in Jaden's old room, and started making flower arrangements, saying that someday when she was cold in her grave Darius could make a fortune selling the flower arrangements hand-crafted by his dead mother. People can't resist the bid-for-sympathy approach.

I'm not sure I agreed with her reasoning, but I was glad to have her around more often. We'd been together for almost thirty years at that point, since Jaden was a toddler. (Yeah, we didn't start officially dating until 3 years after we met and 2 years after our son was born. I'm not proud of it, but it is what it is.) But sometimes I felt like we were never really together, like her heart wasn't in it. Maybe my heart wasn't in it either.





One day I even asked her about it. She had always said that she needed to go mingle outside of official parties in order to keep her job as a socialite. She told me that she was just feeling her years. When she first started this gig, she was hanging out with people a little older than Darius; since he was the child of her youth that means those people were hardly younger than she was. But nowadays apparently she's had to mingle with people who are more like Jaden's age, and since he's the child of her old age it's a little too much to swallow. (Well, she didn't say it quite like that, but that was the drift.)

LTW #2: Woohoo 20 Different Sims.

(I think Ryan counted for 3 of those 20: NPC woohoo, regular, and public.)

Plus, she said she had accomplished all she really wanted to in that arena.

IW: 30 Simultaneous Lovers

Basically, her heart just wasn't in it any more.

Yes, she is dramatically facepalming when I tell her to make out with somebody 40 or 50 years her junior. Crazy lady. 

Silas showed great promise as an artist while he was still very young; when he was just 11 years old he painted a portrait of Brittanie in a dress she'd purchased during our trip to Takemizu.

When it was finished, we had it framed and hung it on the wall of our kitchen.

For his 12th birthday, Silas wanted to go roller skating. There aren't any skating rinks around, so his parents decided to have a rink built right in our own backyard. They admitted that it was a ridiculously extravagant gift, but the 12th birthday is a very significant milestone and we could well afford the expense. Darius joked that it was a good thing he and Elise only ever managed to have two children; Priscilla would probably want a sports car for her 12th birthday just to top her brother, and a third child would have wanted his own private mansion.

At any rate, Silas is a kind, levelheaded sort of boy; I doubt one extravagant gift will ruin him for life.

Silas Kules, som of founder Darius Kules and Elise (Kalson) Kules. 
S1 skin, black hair, gray eyes. 
Aspiration: Knowledge. 
Lifetime want: Become Space Pirate.

First off: Just like his uncle! I find that hilarious. (They're BFFs in-game, and obviously Silas has a bit of hero worship going on.)

Also, the skating rink bit was pure gameplay. I wanted to force Silas to roll a LTW but didn't want to reload the lot, and the only want in his panel that could be easily fulfilled was "Go skating." (I think the rest were stuff like "Go to college.") So he got his own skating rink.

I guess that's about all that's happened to us these past few years. Well, I did end up getting a perfect score on the SKILL test. (I don't know what that stands for; Standardized something-or-other. Kids take it before college to determine scholarships, but adults can take it any time just for the sense of accomplishment, you might say.) You can get up to 10 points in each of 7 categories, and, well, it is pretty rare to get a 70. Impossible? No, I wouldn't call it impossible. It's been done plenty of times. And I know other things that are better candidates for impossible...

IW: Max all skills. For those playing along at home: That means three of the four adults living here got their IW this week.

Oh, and just last year Elise made the Hall of Fame for all her sports accomplishments. I know that's been a dream of hers for a long time. I'm not sure where she'll go from here; I think she might settle down and try to spend some time with family and friends.

LTW #1 and TOC #2 for Elise! I didn't note down her new LTW. Since she's the only adult who hasn't accomplished her IW, she might spend the next week working on that 30 best friends thing.

Also please note the family funds. They definitely aren't hurting for cash here, and their total net worth is the highest in the neighborhood, about $250,000.

I also seem to have forgotten to take pictures of the house. It hasn't changed much anyway. As a consolation prize, here's a picture of the Wall of Awesome in the upstairs study: Darius' diploma (SCL in Economics, if memory serves), his gaming plaque, a set of photobooth pictures from when he and Elise were in high school, Elise's music and dance plaque, and her diploma (SCL in Drama). I really need Apartment Life so I can move things up and down on the walls. My birthday's next month and Christmas is the month after that, so I guess we'll see what happens. 

This update was crazy hard to write; the Kules family really does go in 6 different directions most of the time. I had to rearrange pictures a lot to make a smooth narrative; I hope there are no major continuity errors as a result.

Incidentally, I just realized that the last three narrators have all been male. We'll get a little affirmative action going and make the next narrator female. It'll be easy, since next up is Dejackome Place. The only male to ever live there is Gavin, and he just narrated the college update. So Melanie or Annie will take the mic in our next installment.