WARNING: VERY IMAGE HEAVY UPDATE. LIKE, SERIOUSLY, GUYS. 100+ PICTURES (I THINK THE ACTUAL COUNT IS 114 OR SO).



YO! CHICKY LADY! HEY! OVER HERE!

Dionysus! Long time, no see!

You're telling me, boss! What the heck do you think you're doing, going off and ignoring me like this?! My social is running pretty low here, babe. I need to share the story of my family with the world, you know, and I kinda need your help to do it!

Sorry, Dionysus. Real life just got away from me for a while.

Real.. life? Are you saying my life isn't real to you?! Am I that easy to forget about?! I mean, I know you and I haven't always seen eye-to-eye because you think my romancing of the ladies is a bit out of line - I think you have a lot of Family sim in you, chicky lady, just sayin' - but to just forget about me completely, and then show up and say my life isn't REAL? That's totally below the belt. And on top of me having to remember all about that idiot grandson of mine who went and got himself bit by some crazed glowy-eyed mutt...

Dionysus.. I'm sorry. Honest, I am. I didn't mean to ignore you. And I think your life is perfectly real. I swear. Hey, speaking of Odin, why don't you finish catching me up on what your family has been up to, eh? I've been wondering what happened to everyone after Odin became a werewolf.

Well.. OK. But only if you promise not to ignore me again.

I promise.

And only if you promise to tell me you love me once in a while. A guy needs to hear these things sometimes, you know.

OK. I promise.

And only if you and a bunch of your hot chicky lady friends will---

DIONYSUS.

Will.. DONATE TO CHARITY ONCE IN A WHILE. That's what I was going to say, if you hadn't gone and interrupted me.

Sure, Dionysus. Why do I find that hard to believe?

If I had to guess, I'd say you hate charities. But moving on!

Hey!

( More of Another Chat With Dionysus... )

As you may or may not remember, Harris McNeil (Family) was our founder. He and his dog, Perdita, settled into a lot and struggled through their first week or two of existence. Harris met, fell in love with and married Jan Tellerman (Romance) and the two got down to the whole legacy business of producing an heir (which, given that I'm following the Patriarchy handicap, means they need a male heir).

Harris and Jan had three sons: Charlie, Evan and Mitchell. Sadly, after an unfortunate incident of Evan freezing while out playing in the snow, all three boys were taken away by the social worker. But Jan had been pregnant at the time, and gave birth to their first daughter, Shelly, soon after. They had another boy named Malcom, then another girl named Penny and finally one last boy, Luke. Bringing their total number of kids to 7 (only four of which remained with them).

By this point, both Harris and Jan were elders. But Harris, being a Family sim, still wanted kids.. and he was so close to 10! But Jan couldn't have any more kids, and since they had lost the three boys to the social worker, they couldn't adopt either. And so, we now pick up sometime after we last left the McNeil's...

(And please excuse my spotty picture taking; these pictures have been taken off and on over the course of the last.. holy crud, 10.. 11 months? yeesh.. and I forgot to take pictures a lot. Ahem. So, this might just be a mostly text-based entry)



We'll start off with a teenaged Shelly (Knowledge). This was over at the lot of the Pleasant twins. For some reason, Shelly was stealing their paper.

( More of You mean we're not past G2 yet?!... )

Hi, guys!

Wow, it's been a while since I updated. I apologize for that. I went through another period of not having any interest in the Sims, and then I DID start to play again, but trying to find the desire to sit and write an update, and load all the pictures and put it all together has been hard.

BUT! Hopefully you'll be pleased to hear that I am close to posting an actual, real, honest-to-goodness update! I have one for the McNeil's all written out, I just need to grab the pictures and upload them and throw the update together. Hopefully that won't take me more than a day or two to get around to.

I've also been playing the Legacy's, though not the main family. I got to thinking how interesting it would be to do a What If.. sort of thing. So, I took one of the potential Legacy G5 heirs (Orion was chosen as the original heir, although he had a twin brother, Hunter).. Hunter, and am going to play this branch of the family up through G10. It will be a What If.. Hunter had been chosen as the heir instead of his twin? sort of thing. Just to see how different the family ends up being. I'm having a lot of fun with it thus far, and hope to post about that, too.

I don't recall if I have a main Legacy update, or an update on the Everson's. If not, I'll try to play those families to get updates out on them.

Again, sorry for the downtime. Hopefully my interest will stick around for at least a little bit, what with the new EP coming out soon and all.

Cheers!
-- Audrey

Hey, guys! I know, I've not really kept up on the updates, eh? Sorry 'bout that. I blame Real Life, and the fact that my interest in Sims goes back and forth. It wasn't very helpful that I wasn't interested in Bon Voyage, like, at all (I DID pick it up finally, and I do enjoy it more than I thought I would.. but it's still not exactly my cup of tea; I hate sending my sims away from their home lots. Luckily, the next EP sounds so much more interesting!). I have been playing a bit recently, now I'm just trying to work up the brain power to write an update.

In the meantime, here's a shot of the new layout of the Everson house. I don't think I ever showed the layout of their old house, but.. it sucked. Royally. I can't build houses for beans, even if I follow a floorplan. I always make them too big! And legacy houses are horrible; I always try to keep something of the original, G1 house in the layout of the rebuilt house. In the old Everson house, that meant saving the first bedroom, and keeping the living room/kitchen. Which, after several generations, just wasn't working out. The house was too big and too funkily shaped. So. I moved everyone out and rebuilt and this is the result.



Honestly, I am very much in love with it. It is by far one of my better layouts, even if it was (like all the others) kinda just mish-mashed together. I didn't try to incorporate any of the old rooms into the new layout, just started from scratch. The kitchen is still pretty much in the same place, but I built it instead of trying to save old walls and everything, so it's easier to deal with. I also flattened the lot. Originally, back in G1, the lot took about three or four squares in before it plummeted sharply, thanks to me putting the lot kinda on a hill. So, I had some of it leveled.. but the front of the lot right off the sidewalk sloped up a square. Sims were always complaining about something being in their way whenever they tried to interact out front or set down homework because of that awkward slope. So, the whole lot got flattened completely, which is SO NICE!

As for the house itself, I play with the camera in the backyard looking out to the street.. instead of from the street looking back. From that position I have everything set so that nothing is in my view of anything else so I don't have to do too much fiddling with the camera during gameplay just to be able to click things. And unlike the old house, most of this fits onto my screen all at once, so even scrolling around the lot itself is limited.

I decided on only one nursery in this house, instead of the girls nursery/boys nursery of the old one. And I went with a girls bedroom/boys bedroom concept instead. Only two master bedrooms for the heir/their parents; the old house had a third such bedroom, but I decided that I was safe with only two this time around. Three nice big bathrooms. A study, where the blasted piano is kept so that if people are trying to nap on the sofa, NPC guests aren't waking them up with the horrible noise. All the painting stuff is in there too, as well as the original chess table and chairs from G1. The living room is nice and big and spacious for when kids are doing homework or if I need to bring in a reward object for someone to skill on.. but it's not as big and awkward as the old one. I also moved the driveway closer to the house. The swing and such is off to the other side of the house. Around back is the building where the heir portraits are kept. I was keeping all the gravestones/urns back there too, but the ghosts were starting to be a problem.. both to the Eversons and to the slowing down of my computer. So they all went off to a public cemetary, except for the founder, Isis, and Dionysus, because the lot would be dull without him.

Anyway. So there we go. New Everson house that won't drive me crazy! Although I DO need to remember to fence off the dang cowplant before another accident happens.

Later, all! And hopefully I'll get an update up and out.. uh.. you know. Some time before hell freezes over. n_n;

Keeping busy, I see, Dionysus.

Hey, chicky lady! Of course. Someone's gotta keep this family on their toes, you know.

And who better than their dead relative, right? So, how've things been going?

Well, maybe if you stopped by once in a while...

I'm sorry, Dionysus..

Big D.

I'm sorry, Big D. Life has kept me pretty busy. I'll try harder next time. Why don't you catch me up on what's been going on?

Sure thing, boss! Let's, see...

( More of A Chat With Dionysus... )

Well, maybe not THAT fast. It's been a while since I last updated the Legacy's. And they've come quite a ways since our last update. So I present to you here a crash course of an update. Because I didn't want to try and do an update with the 160 (!!!) pictures that I'd collected since the last update. 52 is a much more reasonable number, wouldn't you agree? So, off we go!

You'll remember that in our last update, G14 heiress, Kaili, married Bug Man Sinjin and they got to work on having G15. Kaili is a family sim and wanted to marry off 6 kids anyway.. so we were off on a Have 10 Kids want. Of the kids thus far, we have Sinley (girl), Henry (boy), Jessa (girl), Becca (girl) and John Travis (boy). And we're looking for a male heir for G15, so both Henry and John Travis are in the running. Kaili is pregnant with kiddo #6.

Here is a shot of the whole entire family. Henry and Sinley are painting, Jessa and Becca are playing chess. Sinjin is showering. Family dog Sulhaya is chewing on a bone. John Travis is playing with a toddler toy. Kaili is eating with Linda (Kaili's mom) and baby #6 is hanging out in mom's tummy. This design of the house doesn't exist anymore, btw. But more on that later.



( More of G14 to G16 in 60 Seconds Flat... )

Well that didn't take me long. Some pictures, as promised. Nothing interesting, just showing off the simple little cemetery I built for the Legacy's use.

An overhead view of the cemetery. Welcome to Legacy Acres! Lay your relatives to rest here so that /you/ can get some rest at home! No spooky spirits wandering around moaning and groaning about their beds! No TVs randomly turning on and waking anyone sleeping on the couch! No more having the puddles scared out of you! Legacy Acres... if you love your relatives (and your sanity) you'll make us the final resting place of choice for the dearly departed.



( More of Legacy Acres Cemetery... )

Sorry for the absence, guys! Real Life has just not been kind to me lately. I'm in the middle of searching for a new job the last couple of months and so I've had no desire to really play video games all that much (whenever I sit down to play, I always get the feeling I should be job searching instead). Hopefully things even out soon, though, as I know I was behind on updating to begin with. I'd been hoping that the news of the next expansion pack would get me excited about Sims enough to play a little more, but.. ugh. I hated Vacation and I'm not looking forward to Bon Voyage either. I hate having my sims leave their lot because with the addition of Seasons my game slowed down a bit and going to community lots has always been horrible. I'd skip Bon Voyage all together, but of /course/ it looks like they've added asian-themed clothes and objects which I /love/ and have wanted forever, so it looks like I'll be getting Bon Voyage just for that. Bah. Here's hoping the EP /after/ Bon Voyage will be something new and refreshing. I'm not liking all the rehashed EPs we're getting. I hope with Sims 3 they at least include some of the "old" stuff with the base game. Especially stuff like weather and pets, which are the things people always want.

Anyway! I don't really have an update ready to go (nor the energy to write one) but maybe someday soon I'll at least get some pictures up. Today I built a community cemetary for the Legacy's so that I could move all those 13 generations worth of graves off their home lot because, man, were there some pissed off ghosts! I'd had to bulldoze and rebuild the Legacy lot not too long ago and when I did that, it made the ghosts lose all connection to their beds and stuff, so even thought I still have their beds, they don't have the connections to them. So they're all sorts of ticked off and were spending all their time scaring everyone. Which got annoying. And all those ghosts slowed the lot down, because I'd have three haunting /every night/.. plus 8 sims and however many pets. It just got crazy. Hopefully their lot will run smoother now that all those graves are gone.

Hope y'all are doing well!

-- Audrey

Seasons is here! And man, it has been kicking my butt! Or, rather, the McNeil's butts. Honestly, I've felt so sorry for them lately. But let's get to it, shall we?

OK, maybe not right to it. Here's a picture of the penguin. Who honestly came around a /lot/. He's a cute little thing, but that kind of wore off after a while. I personally wish he.. did.. something. Aside from chatting up unfinished snowmen about burglars. Also, I swear the stupid bird is psychic...


( More of It's the Hard Knock Life... )

HEY GUYS! I know, I haven't updated in an age. It's been one of those things, though, y'know? Life is way too busy to allow even any play time when I want to play Sims.. but then when I DO have free time, there're just a million other things I'd rather be doing. Money has been tight, so I didn't know when I would be able to get Seasons, which just put another damper on my desire to sit down and play. Luckily, I had a bit of money leftover from paying my last couple bills, so I rewarded myself and went out today and picked up Seasons!

And let me tell y'all.. Seasons is just kicking my butt. My goodness! Most likely the biggest thing was my first ever visit from the social worker in one of my main families. I was -- OK, yeah, I'm gunna spoil it here because, trust me, when I get around to their update I'm severely lacking in pictures, so, might as well! -- I was playing the McNeil's. They had three boys. The oldest two were kids, the youngest had just become a toddler. The two kids were out playing in the snow, building a snowman before school. And I know you're supposed to keep an eye on their temperature thing, so when I looked over at them after having been tending to the others, I was surprised to see one of them turning all pale! So I canceled out his building snowman action and set him up to go warm himself by the fire. Then I made the mistake of going to check on someone else in the house. I wasn't gone for more than a game minute or two. I got back over to them, and the boy who was close to freezing was NOT moving towards the house! He had dropped that action in favor of, well.. freezing. I got the warning to warm him up or the social worker would come, so I hurried to cancel out his brother's building the snowman action so he could warm him up. The freezing kid was only a step or two away from his brother, so I thought I was safe. But no sooner had the brother stopped building the snowman and turned to warm up his freezing brother.. the social worker was there! I thought I was supposed to get more time to attempt to fix whatever was wrong before the social worker arrived.. but she was there before the warning message had even vanished. I was shocked.

Those little thermometer bars go from normal to overheated or freezing pretty darn quick. I mean, those boys hadn't been out in the snow for too long and the one froze (even though he was in outerwear). And they get overheated from just about /anything/.. playing catch, jumping on their beds. I had Harris running on the treadmill and his bar went completely red after only a few sim minutes, it seemed. So.. I'm still adjusting to having to keep an eye on that.

I haven't tried too much gardening yet. The McNeil's have an apple tree, but it's forever sickly. No matter how much I tend it or how many lady bug things I put around it, it's still sickly.

I do love the look of the falling snow, though. So gorgeous. I do NOT like that sims are forever getting a "It's Snowing!" thing stuck up in their queue and looking out the window at it. Looking forward to seeing rain and hailstorms in the game too.

Anyway! I hope to get an update out.. sometime. I don't want to promise anything, knowing how horrid I am with getting things done lately. Hopefully soon, though! <3

It's been quite a while since I updated the Legacy's, and they've come quite a ways. I had a million pictures (or so it seemed) but so many of them seemd like random, pointless pictures and not pictures of things that would have been /useful/ and I ended up cutting a lot of them out. Hopefully I can remember to touch on everything I wanted to. XD

Anyway. Last time with the Legacy's, the G12 bunch - heiress Ryven and her husband, Vincent - passed away. The G13 heiress, Cecily, went buggy as a teen and was unable to become the heiress (she moved across the street with her husband, Marcel, and has 4 kids). Cecily's brother, Noah, became the heir. He married Linda and they had 3 children: Kerrigan, Jamie and Kaili. Kaili became the heiress (going with my new "male heir one gen, female heir the next gen" heir picking technique) and her two brothers moved out after Kerrigan became an adult.

Here is G13 heir, Noah. He's headed off to work as a mad scientist.. and seems to be thinking that he might be getting a bit old for his line of work.



( More of I Need to Learn to Take More Pictures... )

Hi, guys! Again, I'm not dead. For some reason, this year my immune system just SUCKS so it feels like I've constantly been sick. But I have been playing Sims. I feel so horrible having not updated. And I feel so far behind! The only family I haven't played since last update are the Everson's. The Legacy's are WAAAAY behind and I almost fear trying to do their update. So we'll start with my new family that I promised you all: the McNeil's!

Meet Harris McNeil. Family sim. I am playing this family with some of the new handicaps that are available with the updated legacy challenge rules. If I remember correctly, the handicaps I've chosen are Patriarchy (only male heirs), eXtreme (5x5 lot, no marry/move-in sims for a week), Strict Family Values (Family sim founder, always Try For Baby, no woohoo outside of marriage, only woohoo with spouse), and Hypochondriac (founder has 10 neat and stink turn-off, every room has a sink, quarantine sick sims). Oh. I also think I have Free Roaming Ghosts, but we'll see how long that lasts, since you HAVE to keep EVERY grave now. We shall see! But, Harris! Cutie, ain't he?



( More of Meet the McNeil's... )

So! Here we are! We're going to check in on the Everson's today. Last time, G4 heir Dionysus passed away. He will be missed dearly.. but he did leave behind a lovely platinum Romance urn, so that more than makes up for it!

Here is Shelby, the wife of G5 heir Ra, checking the mail. She's fascinated with that wonderfully scented love letter.. although it's not even for her! The letter was left for Dionysus from his main chicky, Nancy. It should be noted that Nancy also called (two days after Big D's death) and said something to the effect of "Oh, Dionysus isn't home? OK, I'll try again later." Even though she had actually BEEN THERE when he died! I tried to get a screenshot of that, but forgot. It was pretty funny, though. And poor Shelby is probably upset that her husband doesn't send HER pink, scented love letters in the mail (she should complain).



( More of Hey, Look! Not Dead! )

Guys! I'm not dead. Honest. Don't you just hate when Real Life rears its ugly head and demands your attention? Like, GEEZ, just go away already, all you silly bills for things like electricity and cable and cell phone, and let me play video games in peace!

I haven't had much chance to play Sims.. although that could also be because what free time I HAVE had has gone to playing either Animal Crossing DS or Zelda: Twilight Princess on my new Nintendo Wii.. but I promise that I will get a few updates up soon. On the schedule:

- Everson Update

- Legacy Update

- Meet my NEWEST Legacy family (as in /so brand new/ that I just finished making them, like, 5 minutes ago), the McNeil's! Harris McNeil and his pet Dalmatian, Perdita (yeah, I'm not very original, so sue me). We'll see how things go for them. I was looking up the new Legacy Challenge rules and by golly, it seems like the whole thing has just gotten so much more complicated! But I have picked out a few handicaps for this family to follow: Patriarchy (all heirs must be male), eXtreme (which looks like the Nightlife Xtreme start I did with the Everson's), Strict Family Values (ha, and just watch me roll a bunch of Romance sims in this family *knocks on wood*), Hypochondriac (the idea of a quarantine for sick sims sounds really fun, if I were to try and work this family with more of a story) and.. Free-Roaming Ghosts, which I'm still considering if I'll actually use or not. Unlike in previous versions of the challenge, it looks like this time, if you want to get these points, you MUST keep EVERY grave you EVER get ON the lot. Which.. the ghosts on the Legacy and Everson lots are all free-roaming, but there've been a couple of graves I've had to toss because the ghosts were super pissed off about something (and in the Legacy's case, there got to be way too many ghosts for the lot to handle well). So I'm still considering that one.

So have no fear! I'm working on updates and I really, really hope that I'll be able to get them up soon and that I don't get too caught up in holiday shopping madness. Hope the rest of you are faring well so far this holiday season! :D

Hello, everyone! Been a while, I know. I got caught up with Pets.. but when I'd sit down to write an update, I'd find that I really didn't have enough pictures (or any interesting ones, anyway). Figures that when I sat down tonight I ended up with too MANY pictures!

Anyway. We'll check in with the Legacy's first, since I've been playing them more. Last we left the Legacy's, G14 had arrived.. first with Kerrigan and then Jamie. Unfortunately, I was looking for a female heir so G13 spouse, Linda, found herself pregnant again. But, here's the firstborn of G14, little Kerrigan toddling along to the boy's nursery.



( More of Now with 70% more Pets... )

Legacy Family update! Wow, actually getting TWO updates done in one night. I'm on a roll! XD Finally, I know. I wanted to get one up sooner, but when I started to go through I only had a couple of pictures. So I took a few more.. enough for a decent update, anyway. I wanted to get one last update out before Pets arrives.. my next updates won't be until I have that expansion in my hot little hands. I am SO EXICTED for Pets! But.. on to the update.

You'll recall that the original G13 heir - Cecily - went all glitchy on me. I moved her into the lot next door with her husband, Marcel. Since Cecily was supposed to have been a Family sim (she's stuck with the Grow Up aspiration, though) I was going to let her have 10 kids.. but I've sort of.. not gotten that done. Yet. So, here are a few pictures of the kids.. mostly just birth and transition shots. First up are the twins. Winston and Lizzie as toddlers.




( More of Family Ties... )

Local casanova, Dionysus Everson, fifth generation heir of the Everson family estate, has passed away this evening. He was 76.

Over his lifetime, Mr. Everson - known as 'D' or 'Big D' to his friends - earned $100,000 at his job as an Ecological Guru. He was a Master Toy Maker with his gold toy making talent badge and he juggled 10 lovers and several best friends all at the same time. At the time of his death, Mr. Everson had 12 friends (not counting family), and 10 lovers. He had woohoo'd with a total of 11 ladies over his lifetime and got caught cheating so many times it's a wonder he didn't suffer any brain damage from all the slapping he received.

Mr. Everson was well known around town for his exploits with the ladies. It was never rare to wander by the Everson estate to see him entertaining a guest.



( More of The Obituary... )

It's time to leave the Legacy's in peace for a moment and check in on my other legacy family, the Everson's of Strangetown.

Hellllllloooooo, ladies! Didja miss me? didja?

Dionysus...

Hey, chicky lady. I do the commentary on my family, remember? And it's Big D.

Only too well. Fine, fine.. but keep it CLEAN, Dionysus.

Clean, schmean.

Dionysus...

Fine! Clean! Sure! Geez. Women are so darn picky. Ahem! Hellllloooo, ladies! It's Big D here, ready to catch you up with the goings on in my family. Now it's ben a while, so please excuse Big D if he forgets some details. Memory ain't what it used to be (but everything else still works just as good! I promise!).

Let's see. Ah, here's a good picture. That's my old honey, Prof. Laura. She came over to visit one day - 'cause the ladies, they can't have enough of Big D - and before I could warn her, she'd gone out to Cuddles, my cowplant. Poor ol' Cuddles was hungry and.. well.. Prof. Laura was a willing dinner. She haunts around now and she ain't too happy about being dead. Or maybe it's 'cause she can now see all the girls I have over. Ah, well. Spooks don't spook me.



( More of The Good Life... )

I just put in my pre-order of Sims 2 Pets. :D I hadn't planned on pre-ordering - 2-day and overnight shipping is just so expensive, and if I ordered online and took the standard 5-10 business day shipping, even by then the stores here would have it - but I just happened to visit Amazon.com today and I had been selected for a free 3-month trial for their Amazon Prime thing. That meant 2-day shipping was free, and overnight shipping only $4! :D So I went with the overnight shipping. I know some people have complained about pre-ordering Sims from Amazon in the past, but I've never had any trouble with them whatsoever, so I'm hoping my luck holds. n_n

I am SO EXCITED for Pets that it's not even funny. I LOVED Unleashed, and to have the pets be more.. realistic.. this time around, I'm just dying to get a hold of this game. The little puppies and kittens are so adorable, and watching the videos of some of the interactions between pets and sims is delightful. I kind of wish they were including more in the expansion - new clothes and hair styles for the sims themselves are always nice - but I guess you can't have it all. I've been debating getting Family Fun Stuff and Glamour.. but I hate paying the price for stuff that you can find for free up for download on MTS2 or whatever that is just as nice, if not better.

An update is on the way (I'm a fan of the Pokemon games, and some new ones were just released in Japan, so I've been distracted checking up on all the new information), most likely with my other challenge family, the Everson's (who are on G6). Things are moving along in the Legacy's too (G14 has arrived! :D), so hopefully a new update on them won't be too far away either. :)

All settled in my new apartment and such, and I've been able to find plenty of time to play Sims (thanks to staying up late the first couple of nights to try and calm down my cat, Rizzo, who didn't handle the move as well as I'd thought he would).

But! The Legacy's. Last we left them, the 3rd child of G13, a little boy named Finn, had just been born, making for quite a full house. Here's our heiress, Cecily, just home from school (the one facing away from the camera). I dunno who the other little girl is, but no matter what Cecily tried to do - hug her, play with her, anything! - the girl got all ticked off and declined the action. Stupid kid!



( More of These are the Days... )