Chapter Eight: Expansions and the new Generation

We start this chapter with photographic evidence that I suck at remembering birthdays.  Especially when I forgot to write things down as I went.  Both twins have clearly aged up to Elders and well I didn't get a good shot as usual.  They are sitting with Wen, who is a teenager in this photo ...I think.

Here we have our resident evil Sim, Aleksia in ...what's this a rocking chair? Wait, rocking chairs didn't come out with in the base game, and this is a base game only install right?  Well...see...I sorta decided it was time to add some spice to this challenge and installed a few expansions.  I followed ASimWen's example and picked a few expansions to install.  I'm not going to tell you which until the end of the chapter, so feel free to make your own guesses based on photos as we go. I will tell you I installed 3 packs total.

This photo shows Cheri on the day she finally got to her lifetime want as a Master Thief.  I can now count everything she did towards the challenge.  I honestly wasn't sure I was going to make it before she aged out.

 

Wen grew up and had her graduation ceremony.  Then promptly got bugged and her graduation cap and gown became her work clothes for a while.

She went to one of the festivals and did an eating contest.  At first it looked like the zombie was going to participate, but it ended up wandering off looking for brains to eat instead of hot dogs.

Wen gave it a good effort, but didn't win.

Cheri started to work on upgrading and repairing things around the house to get some of the handiness skills out of the way.

Oops.

And Grim comes for Cheri Shocklee.  Since Aimee the founder was brought back at the science facility I didn't have an eletrocution ghost roaming the lot.  Now we do.  And no it wasn't on purpose.  It just happened because that's the way this family rolls.

Adam decides to challenge Grim to a pillow fight to mourn the passing of his wife.

Since Cheri hadn't achieved Tinkerer or Electrician, Aleksia, the resident technophobe, took on the task.  Might as well make my elders useful!

Wen put a profile on a dating website and went on a few dates to try and find a single man who was a good match for her.

Aloysia found a man to go on dates with, though she was a bit of a tramp and had a bad rep. Oddly enough this is the brother of the guy who disliked her because she cheated on him while picking up a rock.

Wen had to decide between a fairy, a werewolf, and a vampire.  The fairy turned out to be a dirty cheater who had 5 kids, but wouldn't marry his baby momma.  The werewolf was one of her best friends.  Her family liked the vampire and almost all rolled wants to be friends with him.

I decided that it only made sense that the person she was named after get to decide between the three. 

ASimWen chose the vampire.

Gregg Shocklee (Braun)
Traits: Workaholic, Clumsy, Evil, Ambitious, Angler
LTW: Emperor of Evil
Vampire

 One night while Adam and Aleksia were enjoying the rocking chairs and the view on the balcony....

Grim came for Aleksia finally.

Adam celebrated his sister's passing by having ANOTHER pillow fight with Grim.

One day while out shopping, Wen got her first baby bump for the next generation.

 

Gregg gets slim via a potion and works on his athletic for his job, and Wen works out while pregnant for an opportunity. The family that works out together stays together or something like that right?

One night while playing at the computer, Grim comes for Aloysia.

Everyone crowded in to the study so Aloysia had to go out to the livingroom while everyone else mourned in the room she died in.

Gregg spoiled Wen while she was pregnant giving her a massage with the massage table I got with the Serenity Retreat.  (I camped the Daily Deal list for a while and scored the venue half off! Woot woot!)

Wen had a home birth rather than a hospital birth because I wanted her to have the relationship boost a home delivery gives.  She gives birth to a little girl and names her Rachel (After Rachel Ziese-Lecy creator of the Prosperity Point who does Podcasts for the Sims 2)

Adam loved to hold his granddaughter, but not always in the most logical of places.

I borrow ASimWen's idea of rockers to keep my ghosts busy, and it worked. It even drew zombies to it.

One night I ended up with a lot of ghosts and a couple zombies hanging around the family graveyard.

How many ghosts can you count? Let's just say that I get more ghosts out on my lot than ASimWen apparently.

Adam loves Rachel and the rocking chairs.

I sent Wen up to change Rachel's diaper and unfortunately she decided to let her daughter have her birthday with a loaded diaper rather than changing her so that Rachel would be happy when she aged up.

Rachel Shocklee
Traits: Artistic, Loves the Heat
Vampire 

Ephraim comes out to haunt and ends up visiting with Rachel and rocking her in Adam's favorite rocking chair.  Unfortunately he couldn't be bothered to change her diaper and wouldn't give her to Adam so he could change her.

Adam is 105 days and still kicking.  What is it with the men in this family living forever?

Somewhere along the way the house hold found our first Mr. Mysterious Gnome. 

Odd Photos Out:

Evil Aleksia talks to Charles the Evil Chicken

Crazy random hair do on the repair lady

Wen blows up an elixir while trying to discover elixirs

Rachel practices biting her victims on her imaginary friend

Even with the plentiful rocking chairs the Shocklee family ghosts still find ways to torture their descendents.

Expansions installed: Generation, Supernatural, Seasons

Chapter Seven: Do cowardly ghosts faint when they see other ghosts?

We start out this chapter with a view of what happens when Wen comes into a household of the Sims...Everyone knocks themselves over trying to get to her to hang out with her because of her awesomeness.  If you look closely you will see not one not two but three women in the door, and Ephraim stomping away because he gave up on the traffic jam.  Brent was the winner and this round he got to coo over his granddaughter.

And another traffic jam.... Wen actually drew more people than the sprinkler.

Of course not all of her family wanted to coo over her for good reasons.  Aleksia's evilness came out when she woke Wen up one night just to be able to steal candy from her.

Anita and Brent cuddling in their old age.

Wen grew up with some help from Anita one night and apparently it temporarily made her cross eyed. I actually noticed a few of my Sims doing that when they age up now.

Wen also had no difficulty getting her family members to take time to teach her all of the basics like talking...

 Using the potty...

 And even walking....

Wen got all her skills in and all her family continues to dote on her.

The girls started getting calls for dates and since they were both pretty much just fulfilling lifetime wants and extras..I figured I'd let them do their thing while I focused on the Elders.

On night Anita and Brent were showing their affection to each other in the garden. Brent laid a great big kiss on his lovely wife.....and apparently it was the kiss of death because Grim showed up to get her right after.

This time it wasn't Aloysia the younger blond twin chatting up Grim, no this time it was Cheri the maid chatting up Grim, while Brent of course had to have theatrics about seeing Grim.

 Shortly after that it was time for Wen's birthday to childhood....

It was a simple family affair with cake in the kitchen.

And the post grow up funny faces continue.

The family is now enjoying a washer and dryer as I try to get them some magic gnomes.  They haven't had any luck so far.  Aleksia while a technophobe has one of the highest handiness scores in the house so after the washer breaks it falls to her to fix it.  Even if it did make her incredibly unhappy.

Brent loved to help his granddaughter and it was not uncommon to find him helping her with her homework.

Ephraim had to take up trash digging to help his career along and it was not an uncommon sight to see him at a neighbor's nosing about for information about them.

Cheri it turns out was quite a bit older than her young husband and aged up to elder one night.  This means that for her generation the only heir is Wen.

I continued to let the twins, Aleksia and Aloysia, go on dates when people called.  I was semi hoping they'd find a nice guy that had some traits we didn't have in the house, but I didn't see any really promising prospects for moving in..

One night Aloysia was on what looked like a good date...

But then I had her go over to pick up a rock that I saw laying near by.

 For some reason while she was getting the rock, she suddenly got in trouble with her date.  She had previously kissed other guys, but this particular date she was autonomously kissing all over this guy.  It wasn't until she walked away to get the rock that he got upset.

He accused her of cheating and even went so far as to smack her around a bit. She tried to flirt with him, but then of her own accord took to trash talking him.  I let it play out they fought some more and they parted ways disliking each other vehemently.  Guess he won't be calling for another date.

Around this time my game started warning me that I might want to spend some time with Aimee Shocklee. It was nearing her time. Which is odd since...Aimee is the founding member of her household and is quite dead and haunts on a regular basis as you can see below.

Aimee Shocklee - Challenge Founder

I was quite surprised when out of no where, Aleksia started crawling in bed with her dad, Brent.  I was completely confused.  She normally went to her bed and slept. I did some investigating and it turned out that her bed had become bugged.  It was the second bed I've had become bugged for no apparent reason.  One day a sim will be able to sleep in their bed and then the next time they go to curl up in bed they are told it is in use.  There is no one in it, not even a ghost but they can no longer sleep in it and all interactions with the bed become impossible.

Time went on with Brent fainting any time he woke up during haunting hours, the girls climbing the ladder and even Adam working his way up the medical career ladder.  Wen rolled her lifetime want and she wants to be just like her daddy and top off the medical career path too.

Then it was time for Wen to grow up to a teenager.

Wen Shocklee

Traits: Genius, Clumsy, Hates Outdoors, Computer Whiz
LTW: World Renowned Surgeon

 And then...the never dying Brent started a very bad habit....

Adam - Brent - Cheri - Aloysia

Suddenly if I wasn't paying attention to Brent and Cheri they would start flirting with each other upsetting the entire house.  The problem is Brent has attraction to Cheri where Adam doesn't.  I thought of getting the attraction perk for Cheri to solve the problem, but I was worried it would just make Brent's flirting worse.

So what do you do to keep two elders from flirting with each when they aren't busy??

Brent  - Cheri

The answer: Make them read books.

Adam was getting on in age and it was his birthday and by this time I was quite sick of Brent...So how do you get an elder to die?

Answer: Throw a party.  Works every time...

Noooo NOT EPRHAIM!?!  I wanted to have him knock someone up first!!

 
I think Adam was annoyed because he just continued to eat his birthday cake and ignored Grim coming for Uncle - Brother Ephraim.  (Ephraim is a son of Brent's from before he married Anita, but he was also the spouse of Angela, Anita's sister.)

Grim couldn't get close enough to Ephraim because of the crowd from the party so it was a fairly benign passing. *sniff* Ephraim deserved better. *sniff*

This visit Aleksia decided to chat Grim up.

Ephraim did not live as long as his brother-in-law, Brent.

Brent continued to linger.....

Continuing to flirt with his daughter-in-law and making me cringe every time I saw it happen and didn't get to cancel it in time....

Then one day Brent goes to go in the house and flirt with Cheri and apparently it pissed off even Grim....

Grim finally showed up to take the cowardly Brent to the afterlife where he could live with his beloved Anita to whom even with his flirting he was eternally faithful to.  Cheri watched him go, and cried nonstop about the loss of her father-in-law.

Now by this point I had been prepping the house to move everyone as soon as Brent died.  I had been waiting for him and Ephraim to die before trying to move any one.  I packed up the gravestones for the house (in my opinion the most important possession, and Cheri made a phone call while almost everyone was at work to have them move.

 Cheri and Aloysia drove to their new house

And here they have arrived.  As soon as I got them to the new house, I created a new save just in case anything went wrong.  I then tried to remove the gravestones from the family inventory.

Then freaked out because none of them would come out of the family inventory.  I exited the game without saving any further and researched. I played around with different saves trying to get the graves out of inventory at the new house.  I went back to my pre-move save and took the tombstones out of inventory and saved that as a new save as well.  I wasn't about to lose my ghosts.  I'm quite attached to them.  Plus I hadn't yet gotten to meet Brent's ghost and see how a cowardly ghost acts!

I did figure out how to get the tombstones out of the family inventory.  I was messing around on the save of them at the new house and ending up selling the tombstones that wouldn't come out of inventory, then using the undo button to get the tombstone back.  They each safely came out of inventory after that and I was able to set up a nice little graveyard at the back of the new lot.

The new Shocklee Grounds: We have a graveyard in the back left corner, a pond for fishing, a pool for swimming, a tree house where it is out of the way of everyone, and even room for a garden.  Also plenty of room for any expansions that we need.  (I want to say I pulled this house out of Hidden Springs, but it could have been another hood too.)

The first night in the new house Brent came out to haunt...

Continuing his tradition of fainting anytime he sees a ghost, even if he is one himself.