McNeil: Meet the McNeil's
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?





And this is Harris' faithful companion, a female dalmatian named.. Perdita. Because I am oh-so-original like that. I was going to try and go for a "petacy" so I could have 10 generations of dogs alongside my 10 generations of sims. For reasons I shall get to, I have decided that I won't do that. At least, not in this family.



A man and his dog. It's a beautiful thing. Starting off with a pet was great for that much need Social at all the ungodly hours that other sims yell at you for ringing them up on the phone, especially since I couldn't move another sim in for a week.



And Harris, neat freak that he is, enjoyed cleaning the toilet and the shower, giving him a teeny tiny bit of Fun. Which was helpful since he didn't have money to buy anything. /ANYTHING/!



It really sucks to be a bachelor in an eXtreme start. This is everything that Harris had the money for. A bone and food dish for Perdy, a pizza, toilet, sink and shower. I wasn't sure if he /needed/ the sink, since for the Hypochondriac handicap it says at least one sink is needed in every room.. but Harris didn't even have a /room/. He had a /wall/. But I figured better safe than sorry, so I went sink over telephone.



Harris couldn't even afford the cheapest bed for his dog. Poor Perdita had to sleep on the ground.



And Harris had to sleep standing up.



Note to self: Cats are probably better eXtreme Legacy Challenge starter pets. They clean themselves. Dogs, they do not clean themselves. Perdita got stinky in a hurry and Harris couldn't afford a bathtub. She was stinky for a very good long while.



It got to the point where Harris couldn't even afford the $10 to fill Perdita's food bowl. Yes, it really got that bad. I consider myself an experienced Sims player, and the start for this family was just incredibly challenging!



You know what they say.. desperate times call for desperate measures. And no, that isn't a puddle from the toilet or shower. Ahem. I should probably explain Harris' job situation. His first job was in Culinary. Of course, his first day was a day off. And then the job paid so very little that just covering bills and Perdita's food would wipe it all out. The money situation got pretty desperate, so on his first day off, when the paper came I had him get a new job (one I was sure would work that day) just so that he would hav money coming in. I think I did the job switch once or twice more before he landed with Law Enforcement. Then I had Perdita get a job as well (at one point, she was making more money than Harris!).



Eventually, they were able to afford a bathtub and Perdita could get her much needed bath.



As the week began to draw to a close, I sent Harris downtown to check out some ladies (I wanted to get someone - ANYONE! - moved in as quickly as possible to help with the money situation). He met a couple girls he hit it off with pretty well.




And he later called them up to raise that ol' friendship meter.



Finally, they had enough money to buy poor Perdita her own bed.



Harris had his own cheap bed. It didn't work too well, but at least his energy recovered a bit faster than it did sleeping on the ground. As Harris plays with a stray dog in the background, the woman in the foreground is Marisa Robinshire. She's from an abandoned legacy challenge family of mine, the Robinshire's. Her husband, Basil, is the founder and he is the local King of Robinshire (aka: Pleasantview). Marisa is, apparently, the out-and-about sort of Queen. Honestly, Harris, you shouldn't ignore the Queen when she comes to visit!



Enter Jan Tellerman. Hi, Jan! I liked her looks a lot better than those of the other two girls and she and Harris hit it off right away. When Harris wasn't complaining about his bottomed out Comfort level, anyway (he had a Comfort meter problem almost that entire first week because of lack of bed/crappy bed).



Harris could be pretty darn charming when he wanted to be. Although he lacked good manners. He brought a very beautiful girl home from work to flirt with, and then went about ignoring her the entire time (but she played with Perdita, so all was well!).



Long story short, Jan moved in as quickly as possible. She brought a decent chunk of cash with her, as well as her job at the top of the Slacker career. Oh, and all this junk: two pianos, a vase, an oven, champagne, another vase, aquarium, statue, stereo and the Slacker career reward object. I sold everything but one of the pianos. Yay, money!



Money meant not only could they now afford a good quality double bed, but a real house! With more than one wall! And a roof!



And /carpet/! Really, they were living the high life. As Perdita demonstrates (sort of).



Harris proposed promptly, which Jan agreed to. And I was surprised that she, as a Romance sim, had no fear of marriage or having kids. It was great!



As an angagement/wedding gift, Harris bought Jan a dog. Meet Butch! I lve his build. Very thick and muscular.



They were newlyweds with a legacy to continue (and Jan was a Romance sim), what else were they supposed to do?



Luckily, Perdita and Butch got along just as well.



And before long, there were two expectant mothers in the house. And shame on you, Ben Long! You really shouldn't hang around and listen to that kind of stuff.



As an odd aside.. see the message up there? It's announcing that a sim of mine, Fresno Freewill, is healthy again. Which I thought was odd. Fresno and his family were part of an experiment I did with freewill on sims. I had two adults, two teens, two kids and two toddlers. Fresno and his sister, Fran, the two teenagers, were the only survivors (everyone else died by fire, except the two toddlers who were taken away). I felt bad for Fresno and Fran and gave them their own house and such. And it's odd because Fresno hadn't been ill. And when Jan was talking to him on the phone, I suddenly got the message that he was better. Odd!



Generation 2 comes ever closer...



But first, some new arrivals of the furry sort. Mommy Perdita begins to glow, and it looks like Butch is looking on in concern (he's actually getting ready to settle down by that bone).



Tada! Two brand new cookie-cutter puppies! A male, Chaka, and a female, Ai.



Not too much later, it's Jan's turn to deliver. Except she has to agonize over it. She doesn't get to just glow like the dog did. And hey, Harris. This is your first child. You could try a little more excitement and a little less dull staring.



It's a boy! Just what we needed, since this is a Patriarchal family and all. His name is Charlie.



Charlie's babyhood went by in a flash. Soon enough, he was a toddler. A toddler who gets really annoyed when those blocks don't fit, man.



But hey, he's also incredibly cute.



Double the cuteness! Cute kid plus cute puppy plus cuddling.. it's almost too much.



Oops. Dog fight! Perdita and Butch go at it. And it looks like the old girl is getting her tail beaten. In the background, Jan, preggo with kid number dos, rescues a fit-pitching Charlie from his high chair.



But look! Buth turns out to be nothing more than a big ol' wuss and cowers before the might and muscle of the aging dalmatian girl.



That.. looks kind of painful, Charlie. Butch watches his pups play in the background, like the good dad that he is.



The pups grow up! First Chaka. Who I later put up for adoption to help ease the crowd in the small house.



And then Ai, who was kept when I still had the intention of doing the whole "petacy" thing. But I've discovered that having more than two dogs in the house is a real pain. Having just these three - Perdita, Butch and Ai - is a pain when it comes to having to refill the food dishes all the time, wash them all the time. And especially in the small house, with three dogs, one of them is always in the way. Maybe it'd be easier with cats, who are more independant. But it also gets annoying when three dogs or cats are begging your sim for attention, making your sim drop other actions. Bah. A pain! So.. after Ai, I'm going back to only one or two pets per house. Easier on me that way.



Jan goes into labor for the second time (while Charlie cuddles Pikachu)...



And gives birth to another brown-haired, blue-eyed little boy. This one gets named Evan.



And here's where I stopped playing for ages and ages, and then went back and did a fair amount.. but only took a few pictures. Ooops. Anyway! Jan gets pregnant with a third and final child. They expand the house to have another bedroom, a den for the piano, and a second bathroom. Evan becomes a toddler and Charlie becomes a child who wonders if the other kids will laugh at him for having a dad that likes to wear a hat with a green lightbulb on it.



I thought this was amusing. Butch and his daughter, Ai, get into a rumble. Jan is all excited and cheers on Butch, while poor Charlie worries about Ai and tries to cover his eyes. Butch did when the fight eventually. Much to Charlie's dismay.



We'll close with this picture of little Evan playing while Jan naps in the background (her third child would turn out to be another boy, Mitchell, who is also brown-haired and blue-eyed). An elderly Perdita (hard to tell because of all her white fur) chews on a bone.



Whew! So, that was a crash course in the McNeil's. By the by, none of the boys are named heir yet (I'm waiting to see what Mitchell's personality points turn out to be). I'm really hoping I can keep up with regular updates for a while so that I don't feel like I'm playing catch up too much (I fear the Legacy family update. FEAR!). If the Legacy update isn't next.. I'm hoping to maaaaybe get out a post highlighting some of the custom content in my game, to show that you can get good stuff for free. We'll see how that goes. Until next time, all!