Medina - Another Writer in the Family

Welcome back to the Medina household. Last time we visited here Dylan and Carina became self-employed as a Writer and a Gardener respectively, and Carina quickly rose to the top of her field thanks to the family's large grove of money trees. Eldred aged from child to Young Adult and chose The Culinary Libarian as his LTW, and Edita became a teenager who has yet to express any lifetime desires. Carina also gave birth to twin girls Eleanore and Eulalia who are now Child aged. Finally, Dylan and Carina both became Elders. Moving forward, the immediate goals for the family will be to get Dylan to the top of the Writer career and to hopefully make good progress at least on Eldred's LTW if not finishing it. Once Edita either tells me what her LTW is or I choose one for her when she ages up I'll begin working hers as well.

The first thing I did upon opening the lot before I even took them off of pause was to change up the garden area a bit, rearranging the plants and trees and adding in a couple more SwiftGro Gardening Stations so that all plants would be covered by them. This change was prompted primarily by my having learned how to make full use of the stations since I first put the station in here before (I got rid of the chicken coop last time I was playing them -- I wasn't really using it much and it didn't really make much sense on this lot).

The first few days here passed fairly uneventfully. Eldred got an opportunity that asked him to go to France to buy the recipe for Crepes so he could make some and bring them to the diner. By Friday I was bored enough at the house that I took him there.

The first thing I had him do upon arriving was to head down to the marketplace to buy the recipes and to see what else was available. While there, he met a woman that he took an immediate interest in. Unfortunately it turned out she's already engaged to someone.

He headed out to the Nectary where he bought some equipment that may or may not get used, along with some grapes they don't have growing yet. While there he met a few other women, one of whom, Charlotte Dubois, proved to be single. She may be a possibility for him.

The next day he met another gal at the base camp who seemed promising at first (I admit, I mostly was interested in her because she didn't have black hair), but she too turned out to be already in a relationship with someone. It also turned out that she was from Sunset Valley as well, and wasn't French.

So far it seemed like Charlotte was his best bet unless I wanted to break up another couple, so later in the day he called Charlotte up to invite her over. They just talked at first, but then he started to make his move...and found her receptive.

After that he didn't waste any time, and within a few hours he was asking her to be his bride. She said yes.

Charlotte spent the night with him and the next day after they'd both had something to eat, Eldred asked her to return to Sunset Valley with him and move into the Medina household with him. She accepted. They'll be wed once they return home so I can throw them a proper wedding party. Thankfully she has a LTW that I haven't done yet and no one else already has, so she'll bring in a point or two at least. She can also be a backup for the Writer career in case Dylan doesn't manage to finish it before he dies (he's only level 5 so far with a long way to go yet).

Charlotte Dubois

Age: Young Adult
Traits: Couch Potato, Bookworm, Heavy Sleeper, Friendly, Computer Whiz (Hidden: French Culture*)
Favorites: French music, Key Lime Pie, Orange
LTW: Professional Author (earn §4000 per week in royalties)



*Even though Charlotte has this trait, it won't count for her. If and when she has a child that inherits it, the trait will count for them.




Charlotte and Eldred spent the rest of the day at the Nectary. Eldred raised his Gardening skill a few points by harvesting some of the grapes to take back for his mother's garden while Charlotte hung out and tested some of the nectars. Later, they had a romantic tryst upstairs just before they had to leave to go home.

The following morning saw one of the first of probably many fainting spells for Eleanore after she saw one of the ghosts while she was coming down to breakfast. Poor Cowardly kid's probably going to have to start wearing padded pajamas to cut down on the bruises.

After breakfast Carina made some phone calls to arrange a wedding for that afternoon since it was a Saturday. Several of their friends attended and Eldred and Charlotte were married beneath the arch that had been erected in the back yard.

Afterwards they cut the wedding cake and the guests gathered round to help themselves to it.

Eldred and Charlotte seem to be quite an affectionate couple already, finding one another and flirting any chance they get. Unfortunately Charlotte had a bladder accident shortly after the cake was being cut so she was a bit stinky here (I probably should have paid better attention to her needs before starting the wedding interaction).

The following day was Edita's birthday. Since they'd just had the big wedding party the day before, they opted to just have a small party with just the family for her. Shortly before she had to go to work she went and blew out her candles and aged up to Young Adult. She gained the Charismatic trait. Since she'd never rolled a LTW for herself I had to choose from the ones it offered me based on her traits, and of those, the only one I hadn't already done was Super Popular (be friends with 20 sims) so that's what she got.

The next day was Monday and after the twins had left for school and everyone else had found things to busy themselves with, Eldred sat down to study some of the recipes he'd been buying and in the process completed his LTW. Obviously the set point for "all" recipes hasn't been updated since base game because he's still only level 8 in Cooking and hasn't come anywhere close to learning all of the recipes available to him. I'll take it though since it locks in his status as a point earner for the challenge. I'll continue to have him learn all the recipes he can as well.

Monday was also the twins' birthday, so after they got home from school, the family gathered in the back yard again to watch them blow out their candles. They aged up to Teen and Eleanore got the Genius trait while Eulalia got the Good trait.

Eleanore

Eulalia

On Tuesday Edita went down to the school and got a job in the Education field to have something to do (and to cross another career off the list). Lucky for her she didn't have to start right away because she was dead tired and once she'd finished her paperwork she went home and straight to bed. Charlotte also chose a career, though she decided to register as a self-employed Writer. It's not looking good for Dylan to be able to finish it, so I figured I should get her working on it early on.

Wednesday was back to business as usual for the family for the most part. Edita went to her first day of work then came home and worked on making a friend of the maid. Eldred was getting Stir Crazy so I sent him down to the gym just to get him out for awhile. While there he worked out on his own and came back a changed man. It didn't last long however.

Thursday and Friday passed without much of note happening. Eleanore took an interest in the telescope and discovered a star on Thursday evening. Eulalia wanted to try her hand at writing a novel so she began a science fiction book. Charlotte and Eldred were romantic several times with risky woohoo but so far no results. Finally on Friday evening I sent Eldred across the street to fish after deciding he should learn that skill and try to do the Fisherman career, mainly so I have something for him to do.

The weekend passed without incident as Eldred worked on his fishing, Dylan, Charlotte and Eulalia worked on writing, and Edita talked with people on the phone or did whatever. Eleanore spent time searching the galaxy and found several more stars. She's up to 4 discovered now. Finally, early on Monday morning Eleanore decided she wants to be a Renaissance Sim. It's one I've already done, but I think it fits her, so I went ahead and locked it in for her. The only other thing of note was that I had Edita make a sleeping potion with the Cauldron upstairs that's been largely ignored, but wasn't paying attention to the fact that she needed to go to work in about 3 hours when I had her drink it. Needless to say she was flat out exhausted and just wanted to sleep, but a quick session on the massage table with Eldred giving her a massage got her energy up just enough to send her in.

I snapped this pic when she got home from work as I'd missed getting one when she first made the potion.

On Monday afternoon Charlotte realized that she was pregnant. Most likely this will be her and Eldred's only child, but time will tell. I haven't yet decided what I'll do with the girls -- if I'll let them get married or not. Most likely not, but I'm not ruling it out yet.

On Monday night, Grim came for Carina while she was at the pond across the street fishing. I'd sent her over there because she was getting Stir Crazy and I wanted to clear the moodlet more than I had any interest in her fishing. She was about 93 days old, so it wasn't unexpected, but sad nonetheless since none of the family was around to watch her go -- but wait, what's this? Argh! Apparently she had a Deathflower in her inventory that she gave to Grim and thus she's been reset back down to 73 days old. This annoys me. I thought I'd made sure she didn't have one since my rule has been to disallow any means of rejuvenation once a sim completes their LTW. She must have grown one that I missed. Grrr. Well, guess who gets to start living dangerously.

Apparently I didn't get a shot of her handing over the Deathflower. I think I was too shocked.

Nothing much happened on Tuesday. Wednesday morning saw Eldred getting into an argument with his great-grandmother Kesha's ghost. I almost missed this, but he'd slapped her just before I paused it and got this shot. Eldred certainly has a talent for pissing people off ;)

On Wednesday afternoon, Charlotte went into labor while she was sitting in the kitchen working on her latest novel. The family gathered around to keep her company while she was in labor. In due course she gave birth to a baby boy they named Filibert. He got the Easily Impressed and Slob traits as well as the hidden traits Can Catch Burglars and French Culture. His favorites are Soul music, Egg Rolls, and Violet (yay for a different favorite color). It's kind of cool that the Can Catch Burglars trait is still getting passed down after all these generations

Despite having just become a grandmother, Carina decided to spend the evening swimming even though she was so exhausted she was about to pass out. Her brush with Death must have left her a bit unbalanced. She swam for hours, but despite her exhaustion she managed to make it safely out of the pool each time (and eventually I gave up...sims are devilishly hard to drown now it seems).

On Thursday Carina decided to try her hand at the Inventing bench out in the garage. It had oringinally been bought for Eldred, but he'd quickly lost interest in it and it had just been gathering dust. In the process, she managed to set herself on fire.

Instead of heading toward the shower or pool, she ran out into the middle of the backyard and danced around, yelling and screaming. If not for the quick thinking of the maid (curses!) she'd likely have burned to death.

Carina's new found recklessness finally caught up with her early on Friday morning. Having never showered after getting singed in the fire the day before, she decided to tinker with the wall-mounted plasma TV upstairs to see if she could improve its reception (after fixing a stereo, tinkering with it a bit, and poking at the fire in the fireplace). Unfortunately (*cough*) she was electrocuted and caught on fire once more. As before, instead of doing anything to extinguish herself she just ran downstairs and out into the back yard, dancing and screaming in pain. The family followed her outside, but they were just as freaked out as she was and no one had the presence of mind to extinguish her as the maid had the day before. Carina Medina was consumed by the flames as her family looked on helplessly, and this time had no flower to give the Grim Reaper when he came for her. She contributed 5 points to the challenge in her lifetime.

This seems like a good place to wrap up this entry. I don't like deliberately trying to kill my sims the way I did with Carina, but really she should have died when Grim came for her the first time. I was sure I'd checked inventories several times to make sure those who shouldn't have a Deathflower didn't have one, but I guess I missed hers or something. The upside I suppose is that I now have a ghost that isn't just an Old Age ghost (I should probably note that I've altered the challenge checklist a bit for my own purposes and am considering each ghost type a separate point instead of waiting till I have all of them to take just one point. Since I'm going more by percentages than actual points, and I'm not particularly concerned with comparing my score to anyone else's, I figure it doesn't matter if I use a somewhat different list of things to complete). Not much else was happening with the rest of the family while I was trying to do away with Carina -- just tending to the baby and going about their own business with work and school and whatnot. Before I go, here's a look at how my score stands at present after Eldred finished his LTW and Carina died:

Next up will be a visit with the Fraser household in Riverview. Anya's finished her LTW, but still has a lot to do for her adventures so she'll likely be making a trip or two to Egypt to work on things there. We'll also get to see her son grow up some and maybe Maximus will get to the top of his career. Until then, Cheers!

Medina - And Then There Were Four, uh, More?

In the last update we saw that the Britt family moved to Twinbrook, so we now have only Dylan Medina and his family in Sunset Valley. I handled the split slightly different in this case though, and technically Damien, Adrianna and Eugenia are still in town here. I started with a different copy of my save file, and kept the Medinas as the active household when I had the Britts move out. This was mainly to make sure that nothing got messed up for the Medinas in terms of the house contents and the family inventory (which should really still be theirs even though the Britts ended up with a copy of it too) as well as to keep their current wishes and opportunities (though I wasn't as concerned about those). So, since I couldn't control the Britts after they made the call to move, I simply moved them into the old Medina house. Since they are still in town, and all the relationships with them are intact, I will probably still have contact with them in game, but for the blog I'll be ignoring their presence in Sunset Valley since for story and challenge purposes they moved to Twinbrook. If any of them happen to show up in any of the Medina's pictures, well, we'll just pretend they were in town to visit or something.

I had to do a bit of editing in the town itself, primarily to add in the new lot types that were added with Ambitions. I initially let the game auto-place them after I installed, but it does a stupid job of it so I ended up bulldozing the lots and placing them myself. The Fire Station got moved to a different lot where it fit better. For the Salon and Consignment stores I chose different locations as well, eliminating a couple of the houses on the block with the old Spa (and relocating the families that were living in them) and then the Salon went on the lot in front of the second public pool and the Consignment store went next door between those lots and the Spa. I also relocated the Stones Throw Greenhouse to a lot that didn't have the terrain issues the previous location did and I added in the Serenity Retreat lot from the Store.

The names in green indicate the businesses/venues that the Medina's owned completely by the end of this entry. Click to view full size.

One of the first things I did was have Carina register as a self-employed Gardener. Since they have a large amount of produce stockpiled from the generations of gardeners in the Medina family, this should be an easy career for her to complete. After filling out the applications online, she went down to City Hall to complete her registration.

After she returned, Dylan followed suit and registered as a self-employed Writer. While he was down at City Hall doing his paperwork, Carina realized she is pregnant again (which came as a surprise to me as well since I don't remember her getting pregnant last time). Looks like this household will be growing as well.

Confirmation of how easy it was going to be to get Carina to the top of the Gardener career came the next day when she shot up to level 6 just from selling that day's harvest from the money trees. It was also Eldred's birthday that day so we got him a cake and he aged up to teen with his parents there to cheer for him (Edita had gone to a friend's house after school and hadn't returned yet). He gained the Unlucky trait.

The next day after she had finished with the garden, Carina took her heavily pregnant self down to the consignment store to sell some of the produce she had amassed in her inventory. Afterwards she treated herself to a massage at the spa next door.

Later that evening, Carina was awakened shortly after going to bed by the beginnings of her labor pains. She and Dylan headed off to the hospital so she could have the baby. She gave birth to twin girls, Eleanore and Eulalia. Yeah, I might have let her listen to her favorite music (kids) while she was gardening. Eleanore got the traits Eccentric and Perceptive and her favorites are Classical music, Falafel, and Lime Green. Eulalia got the traits Disciplined and Brave and her favorites are Roots music, Mac and Cheese, and White.

Everyone took turns tending to the twins the next day, though Carina spent most of her day out in the garden as usual. Late in the day she got notice that many of the things she'd put on consignment had sold, and also that she was being given a service award for her achievements in the gardening field.

Sunday was Edita's birthday. After spending the day doing various separate tasks, the family got together to watch her blow out her candles and age up to Teen. She picked up the Dramatic trait.

On Monday morning when Carina was working in the garden, I noticed an odd glowy thing on the ground next to the life plant. I zoomed in, but no idea what was causing it. It remained there for several sim days, and best I can figure, it's just a graphic from the life fruit that didn't get removed when the fruit was harvested.

Monday was also Eleanore and Eulalia's birthday. Cakes were purchased and set up on the tables on the back porch, but when it came time, they didn't make it to the cakes. Instead, they were put down wherever they were and they aged up there.

Eulalia

Eleanore

The next few days were fairly routine, with Carina and Dylan starting to work with the twins to teach them their toddler skills, and also working to maintain the garden. Eldred and Edita had school and were pretty much left to their own devices while I focused on the toddlers, though Edita did go and get a part-time job at the spa since she got an opportunity at school to increase her performance if she did so. Wednesday was Carina's birthday, and the family and a few girls that had come home with Eldred and Edita gathered around to watch her blow out her candles.

The next day Dylan headed off to Egypt to fulfill an opportunity that was asking him to donate one of the books he'd written for the schools there (or something like that anyway). He only went for 3 days, and as with Damien it wasn't my intention to do much adventuring with him right now. I figured it would be nice to maybe be able to pick up a few of the foreign items and plants for them however.

He did get the introductory mission for Egypt and did it, and between that and the opportunity that brought him there to start with he earned his level 1 visa. Aside from that, he just enjoyed his vacation and got to know a few of the locals. He also took advantage of the time he had free of interruptions to work on his latest novel while sitting at the cafe in the marketplace.

He also spent a day relaxing with a book, and then playing chess with one of the locals after receiving an offer of a prize if he could win 3 games by a certain time that evening. It was close, but he managed to win the prize by winning his final game just before time ran out.

Dylan returned home and life went back to normal. The twins had learned their main toddler skills by now and passed their days playing in their new playpen. Carina reached the top of the Gardener career on Saturday after selling off some money bags in her inventory. There was a bit of excitement late on Saturday night when Edita was caught out after curfew and brought home by the cops. This was totally my fault as I'd sent her down to buy out one of the venues they owned an interest in to satisfy a wish a few of them had and didn't think about the time or the curfew. Unfortunately I didn't get a good shot of that event so we'll fill in here with one of the twins.

Edita seemed to have something of an affinity for her ancestors' ghosts, for she would often spontaneously go and interact with them, and showed the least tendency to be bothered by their presence. Sometimes I had her deliberately introduce herself and chat with them a bit, but usually only after she'd initially tried to interact in some way herself. Also I read something about sims not reacting to the ghosts if they have something of a relationship with them so I was trying to test that theory out a bit since it gets tiresome having them interrupted all the time by seeing one of the ghosts.

Edita chats with her Great-Grandmother Kesha in the new sauna building in the backyard

Monday was a day of birthdays. Dylan, Eleanore, and Eulalia all had their birthday then. Cakes were purchased for the twins in the afternoon, and as soon and Carina had finished with the garden and gotten her shower, Dylan took Eleanore to her cake to blow out her candles. She aged up to Child and gained the Coward trait. I foresee much fainting in her future with as many ghosts as we have on this lot.

Eulalia had her turn next after most had finished with Eleanore's cake. She aged up to Child and gained the Photographer's Eye trait.

Dylan was the last one to age up, and did so on his own in the midst of putting away the extra cake from the twin's birthday mini-party. He became an Elder as the family cheered for him.

A few days later on Wednesday it was Eldred's birthday. Shortly before he went to blow out his candles he rolled the wish to have The Culinary Libarian as his LTW after I'd had him prepare some Autumn Salad for the family. Seems a bit of an odd choice for him, but ok, we'll go with it (I did wait until after he'd aged up to lock it in so I could see what other LTWs would be suggested for him. Mostly it was ones I've already done or that equally didn't fit him, so I went with what he'd rolled on his own.) He picked up the Dislikes Children trait when he aged up to Young Adult.

Oddly enough, he grew up into an outfit that kind of fits for his LTW. I may just let him keep it.

This seems to be a reasonable place to end this installment. At least I have something of a direction to go with Eldred now. Edita still hasn't expressed any interest in a LTW so she's rather lacking in direction at the moment. The twins have only barely become children, so it's anyone's guess what they'll want to do, though Eulalia has the makings of another world adventurer perhaps. It remains to be seen which of them will be the heir here; I want to preserve the Medina name into the next generation, but whether that will be through Eldred or one of the girls I'm not sure yet. I'm doing my best to steer everyone into things that will bring in the points instead of letting them just duplicate what's been done before to hopefully get through the challenge (and to additional EPs!) faster. My score has only changed by a point or so, but here's the update on it just for completeness:

Thanks for reading, and I hope you'll come back again for the next update. I'm not entirely sure yet who it will be with. Until then, Cheers!