Here's what's happening in Em's Sims' Worlds

LOL!!! Too funny, Em! Very cute!

The ladies passing out at the table cracked me up. And Dalia after her makeover was just too funny.

I had the exact same thing happen to me - just tonight Blake Halsten got a burning thought bubble with nothing in it. He did it twice, but I wasn't fast enough to catch a picture of it - the house is way crowded and busy, now. What do you suppose it means?

Funny update!

This is funny, Em!!

I like Dalia's makeover. She looks so much better. The first time I saw her, Mary Travers popped into my head. I don't know why, but it did.

I've got a picture of a Sim passing out at the table. I'll have to hunt it down. Your's are just too funny! LOL

This was a great update, Em.

I got a giggle out of the following:

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...See? And you thought you could make it through a whole workday. She couldn't even make it through breakfast...
...Lexie isn't fairing much better and both ladies take turns passing out at the table...
...Dalia gets her makeover. Doesn't she look better now? She seems less than thrilled...
...Jasmyn: Hmmm, I know I was furious about something, but I can't remember what now...

I'm really enjoying sharing what's going on in our games. It's so much fun to see all the great screenshots and read all of your commentaries.
Thank you for participating in this thread, everyone.

Em, this was wonderfully entertaining! But lady how you can handle a Sim house with so many children is beyond me! I can barely deal with two (the very few times I have actually played my game, lol)

Well, I looked through Jasmyn's relationship panel and the only person she was furious with was one of her little brothers. She's a very neat sim, so I'm guessing he made some kind of a mess in the house and that ticked her off. I don't know why there was no picture of him in the thought bubble though.

I'm going to have to look up Mary Travers. I'm not sure who that is . . . I kind of miss Dalia's long hair. She doesn't seem the same with her new style, even though I knew I had to keep it blonde. She wouldn't let it go completely gray.

The kids are actually pretty easy to take care of. The toddlers were hard, but for the kids I just have Dalia or Jasmyn serve a meal once a day (they eat at school) and let them play together most of the time. They are almost always outside playing catch or having water balloon fights. There's only one shower though, so they have to take turns with the bathroom. I've been using the aspirational points that come with freetime to make their needs decay slower. This is the first time I've got to really play for any stretch of time since I bought freetime, so that's new to me and I'm not sure what difference it makes.

I think I must have the same hack as you, Ari, that has a pop-up to ask permission before the kids bring a friend home and gives the kids a no homework day once in awhile. I forgot I'd downloaded that, but I think it makes it more realistic. How many kids, especially in elementary school have tons of homework every single night. Maybe they do now, but it wasn't like that when I was in school.

I added a new family. I'll have to share pics later. Sunday night I decided to roll for a 3rd family, because I was getting kind of bored with the Averys, especially since there were no teens for Jasmyn to hang out with. My neighborhood doesn't have any townies in it. But I was being too picky and kept rolling over and over, until it wasn't random anymore. Monday I tried again and only rerolled after I got two single sim households in a roll and settled on the third one. It's another elderly lady with a house full of kids, but I'm doing it a little differently this time. I got them settled in and then went back to the Averys to re-play the day I'd lost. The little boy wanted to play along with me and turned off my computer while I was playing the game. Luckily I didn't lose too much.

Chase turned your puter off! How funny is THAT? I'm glad you didn't lose much, Em. That would've sucked.

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I've been using the aspirational points that come with freetime to make their needs decay slower. This is the first time I've got to really play for any stretch of time since I bought freetime, so that's new to me and I'm not sure what difference it makes.

I will be curious to know what you learn. My latest fam, Megan and Maggie Valentine have all of those "needs decay slower" checked, too. I didn't get to play much after I checked a whole bunch of them last night, so I'm not sure how much difference it will make either.
I'll pay close attention today, when next I load up my game and will be interested to hear your report, too.

I look forward to meeting your newest fam (the elderly Sim with young ones) next time!

The kid loves buttons. I was trying to get him to press the mouse buttons or letter keys instead, but he knows the power button actually does something and I can hardly keep him from trying to push it.

Here's my new family. I didn't want to make another placeholder sim to kill off, so I started out with the woman as an adult and aged her to elder as soon as I moved them into a house. Plus that makes them different from the Averys. Instead of a grandmother raising her grandkids, this is an older mother raising her kids.

Their random last name is Herbst. The mother is Fernanda, a family sim and Pisces. She has three teenagers, Angela (popularity, Capricorn), Cale (Knowledge, Cancer), and Jett (family, Aquarius) and two children Mackenzie (Capricorn) and Talia (Libra) and a cat named Buster.



Here's Fernanda as an elder.

Aw, they're a really nice looking family. Fernanda aged well. Lots of teens, now! That will help fill out the neighborhood a little.

Oh Em I'm sure it wasn't very funny to you at the time, but it's kind of funny that your little one turned off your game, lol! It's just brought back memories of my babies when they were little and they would get into stuff and mess up my things, lol!

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It's just brought back memories of my babies when they were little and they would get into stuff and mess up my things, lol!

I second that, though now my grandbaby is doing it. Isn't it amazing how fascinated they are with buttons and how quickly they figure things out? A few months ago, Baylee, who is 2-1/2, was on my main puter. She wanted to check out the hippo & dog "Lion Sleeps Tonight" video on YouTube.
She took the mouse and with all of my desktop icons staring her in the face, pointed it directly to IE, then double clicked!
I couldn't believe it and thought it was a fluke, except the next time she came, she did the same thing!
Unbelievable how fast the little ones pick up on things, isn't it? Chase is off to an early start, my friend.

I love elderly Fernanda's smiling face. You've got quite the family there to contend with.
I look forward to hearing about their adventures, Em. Thank you for sharing.

It was kind of funny. But he was getting frustrated with me when I tried to keep him from pushing the button again. He loves to turn the TV on and off and open the DVD player and my CD drive. I had to unplug the DVD this morning, because I was tried of prying him away from it before he could get the CDs out of the tray.

I haven't played this new family much. My game was running slow and the house I moved them into was tiny, so I was having trouble getting into them, but Fernanda and the teens all came by the Averys one way or another, so they had a chance to meet at least.

I think it's Awesome that kids figure things out the way they do. Bay figuring out how to open the Internet is an awesome thing. It's also a bit sad and scary. It's sad because you know they're moving into that "don't need you as much" phase and scary because even for adults the internet can be a scary place.

Overall - I LOVE it. I love that my niece is so technologically astute. She's been that way since preschool and now she's just SCARY. I'll tell her technical issues I'm having and she starts asking questions using terms I've never even HEARD of.

Em - Fernanda is quite the lovely lady and her children all seemed to have fared well too. Usually when I have families with many children - there is always at least ONE that should be placed UNDER A BRIDGE.

I have so much catching up to do with you guys for posting in game shots - and I fear my "witty" button has been switched off. That is partially why I have not been keeping up with the "A Day in the Life" post for my models either. I have pictures - but can not seem to "write".

I marvel at stories like Em's with Chase and yours with your niece, just as I do over what I'm observing with Baylee. It was the same way, thru the wonder years, with my daughters, too.
As you said, Hunter, it's sometimes scary how quickly they learn and progress, but always AWESOME.
(I mentioned Baylee's latest feat in our personal thread.)
I look forward to catching up with you and the Yumminator's Sim antics. Don't worry about always being witty and clever with your screenshot captions. I'm not NEARLY as witty with mine as Em and Ari are!!!

Em, did I read somewhere that you were planning on getting back into your story?
I was just thinking of that yesterday, when I was updating my "Sims Scribes Corner" at Sugah's Place.

The first few times it was kind of funny and cute, now it's starting to get old. We're selling the coffeetable that my laptop is currently on, so hopefully I'll finally move it somewhere higher, more out of his reach. I've been meaning to do that for a long, long time.

How old is your niece, Hunter?

For Fernanda's children, she came up as a random sim, that I might have tweaked a little and I made a random male (two actually, so the children wouldn't look too much alike, but the random fathers looked kind of similar to each other actually, they were both blond) and used the make a baby option in CAS. Some of the kids weren't very cute at all, so I kept rerolling until I got ones that I liked. Otherwise I would have ended up with some that should have been under a bridge too. lol

Don't worry about being too witty. I just describe what I see most of the time. I am having trouble getting back into the writing mode though. I was going to try to write my next story update or at least type out the outline I have written, but it wasn't working for me, so I've decided to start taking screenshots for it instead.

SimEm wrote:

How old is your niece, Hunter?

She will be 15 in July.



WHERE did it go?????

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I am having trouble getting back into the writing mode though. I was going to try to write my next story update or at least type out the outline I have written, but it wasn't working for me, so I've decided to start taking screenshots for it instead.

Em, are you referring to Arrendale Heights or Penelope's Journey?
I am anxiously awaiting the next chapter of the latter, cause as you know, I am still SO SO SO far behind on AH.

I hope your muse returns to you. It must be especially challenging when your little man is on a mission to turn your puter off every so many minutes!
Bon chance, cherie!!!

My cousins son will be 15 in less than a month, I think. It's hard to believe. One of my other cousins said once, "he's going to make us all feel old." (Of course she accused me of making her feel old too and I'm only 3 years younger than her. lol)

It's AH I'm working on. I really want to do one more episode as a conclusion before I take an official break. Then hopefully I'll be able to start again anew, so new people can read it without feeling so completely overwhelmed. Penelope's Journey doesn't require any writing before I update it again, just picture taking and editing. I'm using text that I'd written a long time ago. Taking the screenshots for AH is helping me get back into the story though, so hopefully I'll be able to start writing before long.

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I really want to do one more episode as a conclusion before I take an official break. Then hopefully I'll be able to start again anew, so new people can read it without feeling so completely overwhelmed.

Do you mean AH is NOT necessarily coming to a complete end this next episode? Or will you be pretty much done with that chapter of your writing life, so to speak?
When you start it "anew again", does that mean it'll be all new characters/families and storylines ... nothing much (if at all) connected to the original AH?

Elaborate, Scribe Emily!

I look forward to the next chapter of Penelope's Journey and will be happy to announce it at Sugah's Place, when you're ready to go.

I can elaborate. I would have before, but I thought I probably had somewhere already before. My plan right now is to finish one more episode of AH and then take a break from it, at least through the summer, maybe longer. Then I'm going to pick it up again 15 years in the future, so I can write about the next generation. It will be connected. Most of the old characters will probably still be there, but I'll focus more on their kids.

That's my plan right now anyway. I may change my mind. I might not pick it up again or I might do different characters or farther ahead in time. I'm still trying to figure out what works. I've been playing with the new characters and sometimes I feel like I have too many and other times like I don't have enough. Maybe they just don't mesh together well or I have too many different ages. I'm hesitant to get rid of any of them because they were actually born when I was still playing the sims 1, so the way the families are is set in my head.

It probably won't be until next month at least until I start working on Penelope's Journey again. But when I update it, I will let you know.

I don't believe this. I was playing around with my next generation of Arrendale Heights characters. I've got them living in a separate hood, just to see who gets along with who and who doesn't. One guy has already had woohoo with four different women and gotten three of them pregnant thanks to ACR. But anyway, while he was getting busy with one lady another was looking through the telescope and . . . I had my second alien abduction ever! I have no hacks or cheats to make it happen more often. I was just playing around, not seriously playing, so I was stunned.

Thank you for elaborating on what your tentative plans for AH might be, Em.
If you advance 15 years into the future, that'd be so neat.
I can't imagine having so many characters to develop and plan storylines for.
My mind simply doesn't work that way. I so admire your ability to breathe life into your cast and give them DIMENSION.

I look forward to the next episode of Penelope's Journey.

WOW! Awesome abduction captures! For being stunned, you sure managed to snap some great screenshots.
They're all terrific.

Just out of curiousity, what's with all the hot tubs in the middle of the street?
And what does that hourglass timer on the front yard do? I've never seen it before.

Thank you for sharing. I really enjoyed seeing your alien abduction pics. Great job!

I was caught off guard, but no so much that I couldn't think to hit pause right away. The hot tubs are actually in the neighbors' yard. Do you recognize the pink house across the street. Maybe not, it's pretty blur from that view, but it's one of yours, I think. The lot was too tiny for the hottubs, so I used move objects on to put them in the street so my sims could schmooze and get to know one another. They look like they're in the street in front of this house too, but they're not actually on this lot.

The junk in the yard is part of the insiminator. The hour glass adjusts the ages of sims, I think. I used it to grow up a bunch of my sims.

I don't know how I'm going to manage all of these characters either. I have almost 20 kids in the next generation, I think. I've kind of divided them into 2 groups to make them more managable, so I have a younger set and an older set. Maybe I'll have to focus on one half at a time or maybe I need to pick out a main character or two to focus on and let the other be supporting characters. I should probably try to get rid of some, but I'm just too attached to them all.

I have never seen an alien abduction. That looks rather interesting. I like the screen shots. Thank you!

When I first saw the first picture, I was wondering what that was, then as I scrolled down, I saw. I won't let my Sims stay at the telescope long enough to get abducted.

The only thing I use InSIMenator for is, reset their age, turn aging off, and auto pay bills. Oh, I get them a cell phone too becuase I hate going downtown. I think you use the gnome for that.

Em, no, I didn't notice my little pink Victorian TH. How cool is that! Thank you for using it in your game.
You're right. It has a very tiny lot (1 x 1, I think), so a hot tub is out of the question in that yard.
(I wouldn't even call it a yard. It's what we call a "zero lot" here.)

Abductions are really rather cool to experience, Ed. And nothing bad (unless you consider the possibility of an alien pregnancy bad) really happens to your Sims when they ARE taken up in the spaceship.

Speaking of abductions...
I was thinking of you last night, Em. I witnessed an abduction.
I played the Curious brothers of Strangetown for awhile, as I am using them as Sim models this week.
(The geeky trio will be modeling some sci fi shirts I put together for this weekend's Strangetown Revisited update.)
Anyhoo, I had to play them through til Pascal had his alien baby and Vidcund was abducted and returned to the Curious home. Of course, I had to hurry and get the shots before V started showing with HIS alien baby!
I got only a couple of shots of Vidcund's abduction to share.
I was having so much fun with the three of them, I played them til I almost fell asleep at the puter.
I think I am going to return to them tonight.
(Will be posting the latest screenshots in Sugah's Sim Antics in a bit.)

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I don't know how I'm going to manage all of these characters either. I have almost 20 kids in the next generation, I think.

In a lot of stories there are a few main characters and the rest of the cast are just supporting roles.
I don't blame you if you don't feel you are up to giving ALL 20 kids full story lines EACH. OY VEY!
What an endeavor that would be, Emily!

I've always let my sims stargaze with the expensive telescope and in all the years I've been playing this is only my second abduction. The other was a teen male, so I had no alien babies result from either abduction. It's kind of scary at first because their need bars go crazy while they're in the spaceship, but once they come back, they're perfectly fine.

I don't know how I end up with these huge casts and long stories. It just keeps building and building as I work on them. I'm just focusing on the older kids for now and then maybe as they grow up I'll start adding in the younger ones. I've been playing around with the age order of some of them, seeing if I can come up with a better fit.