The number of logic points you have don't matter. Sims with high logic points tend to get abducted more often because they use telescopes more often in order to get high logic points. There's a set percentage, dependent on what you're doing, and you get lucky or you don't.

Very cool for your story that an alien came visiting right before each time, though! He was obviously responding to the alien summoning.

In the Genderswapped Uberhood, Gabby O'Mackey was hired by LFT and reluctantly left her son Gabe behind with Rhett and the rest of his brood in order to live in Viper Canyon with Jules. I was hoping Rhett would be her first-day outing, but no, it was her brother-in-law William Greenman. Who made friends with Caspian Goth at some point. When she's not with him, Gabby has no bolts with Rhett, and she and Caspian double-bolted and got along quite well, spending a lot of the evening playing darts and then chess together; but she also had wants to flirt and dance with Rhett that whole time, and of course Caspian is engaged to Donna Lothario.

Bristol Capp put together a social group of Allies to help her organize the practical elements of eloping with Benicio Monty. The Allies she chose are Benicio (of course), Titanus Summerdream, Aubrey Gossamer, Rhett Hart, and Sandy Beech. Titanus (who autonomously got a crush on her, somewhere) was not thrilled, but Aubrey, committed to the ideal of ending the feud and BFF with both of them, was. Rhett actually has a stake in this, as one reason the Capp business interests recruited him for their recording label was that the Capps, though technically victorious, are depleted in numbers and need to expand their breeding stock. Rhett thinks she's paranoid to think that Old Lady Capp is actually trying to maneuver him to marry Bristol (What, she's supposed to seduce him? That's so funny, given his track record!), but he does take seriously the news that the Capps regard his son Silver's dating Tibby Capp as a permanent commitment, and he's generally sympathetic to Benicio and Bristol wanting to get the hell out of town to get married on the downlow. Bristol made friends with Sandy specifically for her political connections and her prominence in Widespot - which is where they've decided to move. Benicio works with Junior Mann, and everything's falling together, if they can just get the cash together, and the wedding licenses, and everything, without alerting Consort or Patrizia.

Benicio's sister Antonia, independently, invited Rhett's family over Saturday afternoon, along with Patrizia, Isador, and the girls. Romy had to work evening shift at the restaurant, but everybody else showed. Antonia is under orders from Patrizia - she is to scoop Rhett out from under Bristol (the Capp plans are so transparent!) and breed more Montys. Antonia is dubious about this, but trusts Patrizia's ability to coerce him into the marriage, and the idea of stealing something from the hated Bristol has her up to it. She's not going to be rushed, though, and she wants him to make friends with her brother, who lives with her, and for Beaumont and Benedicta to make friends with his boys first. So she raises no objection to Benicio hogging Rhett at the chess table all night. They made friends, despite Rhett's continual blatant cheating. Benicio always caught him, and Rhett always laughed, and they kept right on talking about money and travel (! I love it when the speech bubbles work with the storyline) with the relationship going up and up and up.

As for the kids, they hung out on the playground. New Family teen Geoff Rutherford Hart kept heartfarting new Knowledge teen Benedicta Monty, but she resolutely ignored him to lay siege to Silver - who was not having any, thank you very much! She kept standing in his queue swooning and heartfarting, and Silver kept hanging out on the slide and monkeybars, or spinning his brothers on the merry-go-round, till whatever interaction she was trying timed out.

Things are taking off very slowly in Coveshire Crater which is the town setting for my new soap opera "Money Talkers" so far only 3 cast have been revealed but there are many more to be started as things progress. Next episode spoiler plot points are spoilered just in case people want to follow along as it progresses or jump ahead to see what's upcoming.

Recap:
- Baron Ravencroft arrives downtown on his employers orders looking for a suitable place for a "business" expansion.

- Malcolm Landgraab gets passed over for a promotion by the board of Landgraab Enterprises and will continue running the local businesses.

- A chance encounter at Cold Issue Clothing between Baron and Malcolm leads both of them to realizing they want to be their own bosses.

- Baron meets stunningly feisty Kaylynn Dobson and the attraction between the two is immediate despite her being a teen.

- Malcolm gathers the board for an emergency meeting where he smugly tells the board he resigns and is taking his owning percentage of the stock to become a corporate raider thereby making his own family company his first victim.

- Baron finds an ideal location and decides to keep the information to himself so he can establish his own presence downtown and start climbing up the mob ladder.

- Kaylynn lies to her friends about dating Baron after she's seen leaving his house during school hours leading her popularity at school to skyrocket and her self esteem to plummet.

I've made a huge mistake with one of my families and I'm starting to feel extremely terrible about it. This entire time I've been thinking that Dakota and Lilly Morgan's LTW was to reach the top of their careers. Turns out, I was completely wrong and their LTW is actually children based and now I feel extremely bad about focusing their lives around their careers. Its too late now since they just aged into elders this session. At least they had Kody. I did have them try a lot at one point and while she got pregnant I think she miscarried twice. Guess it just wasn't in the cards for them. Dakota does have two other children (Sarah and Emette) resulting from a teenage pregnancy so I guess that's not too bad. Especially now that they're starting to have their own families.
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The Davis family (and I) waited impatiently for the new baby to arrive. After what felt like forever the baby finally arrived during the middle the night on the second day of the rotation. Her name is Kessi and she has Reiko's beautiful grey eyes and brown hair. I wonder if she'll look more like her when she's older, her other two kids don't look anything like her. Esther looks like Emette's side of the family and Parker looks like Reiko's father. For whatever reason Esther does not like her new baby sister much. I've seen this before, is it a glitch of some sort? Or is she jealous because there's another girl in the family?

Parker has a LTW to woohoo 20 sims and he managed to get three sims this rotation! Four down and so many more to go! Poor girls, I have a feeling there will be a lot more fights when I play the school session and they all start flirting with him. Esther kind of kept to herself this session, she went on a couple dates but thats about it. Emette is almost done with finishing his degree. The faster the better because its been taking up a lot of his time and hasn't spent a lot of quality time with the family. Reiko is so in love with her new baby and that she's been trying to get pregnant again. When Reiko first had the twins she was still in college and Emette had just graduated so he had the babies with him therefor she missed out on a lot of baby/toddler time. It's always been her dream to have a big family, heck maybe she'll try to have six kids!

Reiko's brother is also enjoying having a newborn in the house. After trying everything in the book and getting into some debt Aiko and his wife Natasha randomly got pregnant right after adopting Georgina. Little Rei (named after Aiko and Reiko's mother) looks exactly like Rei Sr. She's the cutest little toddler I've seen in a while in my game. She has an oriental look with high cheek bones and tiny little plump lips. :lovestruc

Right now I'm playing a base game 'hood in AGS to test a house that I hope to upload. The 'hood is the "Mini Game" by Numenor that's included in AGS. (The hood ships with only one house and two Sims.) I created a family to test my house -- the Mortons: Martin Morton the father (Fortune), Amanda Morton (aka Mandy) the mother (Popularity), Menzies Morton their teenage son, and Muriel Morton their daughter (child). I don't usually do alliteration but I couldn't resist it this time! I had equipped the front bedroom of the house as a nursery with a cot and a potty When they moved in they all trooped into the nursery and stared at the cot, as if to say, "Muriel can't sleep in that!" Then they all gaped at the potty. "Why on earth do they think we need that?!" They've now sold the cot and potty and bought a single bed for Muriel.

The lot is only 1x2, so I want to test that taxis, carpools and school buses can all use it in base game, so I'm going to play it for at least a Sim day or two. When she had finished studying cooking till she had a whole point, Mandy went out to greet their neighbour Rhonda Random (one of the two Sims that Numenor put in the 'hood) and to bring in the paper to look for a job. As she was picking up the paper I checked what was happening in the house. To my horror I saw that Menzies, the teenager, with absolutely no cooking skill, was putting a TV dinner into the oven. I have an absolute horror of those cooking fires -- I know that I never, ever want to have to sit and watch someone burn to death. Normally I play with Squinge's No More Fires mod but I'm playing this base game 'hood with minimal CC, and I don't even know if that mod works with base game. Well, I saved and quit like that, with the TV dinner halfway into the oven. Then I backed the game up, and copied the No Fires mod into its Downloads folder. That's how I've left it. I just hope that mod works with base game. Of course he might not start a fire, and there's a fire alarm over the cooker, but I'm just afraid the fire brigade don't get there in time. I've managed to keep the Grim Reaper completely out of my game so far, and I've absolutely no wish to meet him in this test 'hood.

P.S. I've just checked on insimenator and it says EP2 required. I never envisaged playing without this mod or without EP2 for that matter, But how else can I test that my house works in base game? I suppose I'll just have to grit my teeth and go on playing, hoping for the best. First I'll try it with the mod in place, and if, as I expect, that crashes the game, I'll try it without.

Oh! Why do I have to care so much about my Sims -- even in a test 'hood?

She'll be fine, Andrew! Just stand over her and don't let her wander off!

In the GS Uberhood ALT, Erin Sharpe invited her boyfriend Deliaiah O'Feefe to move in with her and her brother Ross, Johanna Powers having joined the sorority and moved out. Delaiah immediately rolled a want to get engaged, so he took her to the Just Off Campus Diner, gave her a nice dinner, and proposed. They came home and relaxed on the bed that used to be Ross and Johanna's, at which point I realized the only Kiss option was "First Kiss!" So they got up, took care of that, and proceeded on to happy exploration of the Complete Unknown. Erin wants to be a Criminal Mastermind and Delaiah wants to be a Space Pirate; I think they're gonna have to step up their adventurous game to make those goals! Meanwhile Ross, to whom I gave a Family secondary so he could combat flu, wants to get engaged to Chaz Whippler, which is a singularly bad idea except that the offspring would be guaranteed to be blond and green-eyed. Anyway, the Sharpe house started really getting on my nerves and I realized I'd never yet built a dedicated student residence from scratch, so I got them a nice purple stucco with shabby carpet and ladders to the roof so Ross can play his drums up there and they can begin their criminal career by installing an illegal bubble blower, across the street from the former Worthington place on LFT.

Panic over! He did wander off -- to read a book(!), but I cancelled that and he went back and got it out of the oven -- and he didn't even burn it. Actually, before I had the No Fires mod, all my Sims, with the exception of the McBain teens, behaved sensibly during fires. Martin Moltke, when he heard the fire alarm, would just calmly walk away from the fire, and stand a few tiles away, waiting for the fire brigade to come and put it out. Only the McBain kids were really silly, running to look at the fire. Their mum and dad just ignored it and continued what they were doing in the living room. But the McBain teens are like that -- silly, but adorable -- they're just big kids! It was worth getting that mod to keep them safe.

As for Menzies Morton, when he's finished eating, I'll make him study cooking! And his dad too, in case he gets the same idea.
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@Gcgb53191 I think in your shoes, I'd change Lilly and Dakota's LTW. I've changed Consort Capp's from "Reach the top of the Criminal career" (quite impossible) to "Reach the top of the Business career", which requires only one more promotion. Then we'll see if being permaplat makes him any nicer!

Andrew you are not supposed to 'play', play a test family, only test. Eg can sim A use this bathroom and go upstairs and get to that bed and can sim B sit on each chair at the table and so on. I don't even look hardly at my test sims or even know what aspiration that are, I just click whatever is closest in CAS make sure they are not wearing something hideous in case I show them in my lot uplaod and done in about 15 seconds flat. I also use the portal checker to check that portals are there in a shrunk lot.

In my game I should also be building, I told myself I would build a Queenslander for this month theme but I am just not feeling like building so I hasn't even opened AGS. Maybe because it's winter over here and so cold! I don't know. I've been playing Coral bay instead, finished summer rotation and now can finally start playing uni. One day so far and of course my family sim guy just wants to find love but there are hardly any suitable sims around yet. My hood has 2 townies and about 8 uni students in the directory. I really do not want to make any so I will have to pair up the born in kids as they age up with someone they don't hate at least.

Ah Jo! To me even test Sims are real little people with their aspirations and their fears -- and in need of my care and protection! :lovestruc

My simself's husband is one of my favorite sims. After the twins were born, he rolled wants to spend time with the newborn babies (usually to just hold and play with them). Then they aged to toddler and got a bit much since I'm playing in Elsewhere which is a nice world with small houses. So the twins kept keeping their parents from going any where because they wanted to keep following them and asking for attention (eventually he was so tired I had my simself stay home from work to give him a hand).

Immediately after the twins aged up to children, he rolled the want for another baby, slept on it and then woke up with the want and fear of another baby (My simself, who has a secondary family aspiration is pretty much meh about the whole thing). And has pretty much rolled another baby has a fear every so often since then (that doesn't stop those two from autonomously sleeping with each other (I got ACR) but they choose casual woohoo instead of try for baby way more often now, but I'm pretty sure a baby is on the way, they are on vacation and simself's motives has been going down very quickly.)

I also like how, even though his wife has none of the traits the he considers turn-ons, he still has 2 bolt chemistry with her (and it shows, he rolls wants to talk to her, share a joke and stuff but I'm not sure which sim is initiating the woohoos as she also has him as 2 bolts but he fits her turn ons). She doesn't really roll a lot of wants concerning him but instead spends time with him autonomously.

Grunts (General Buzz & wife Jennifer): Things were getting desperate at the Grunt household. They had very little money and were way behind on bills. The bills are about 1,000 simoleans a day and Buzz only makes 550. Their savings were depleted because Buzz's alcohol rehab was quite expensive. Jennifer, whom he met at the rehab, didn't have any money to bring to the household either. To make matters worse, they had a toddler (Wade) and three babies (Rose, Brooke, and Jade) to take care of. Since Buck had left to start his own life, there was no one to take care of the kids so Jennifer could work. In the end, they had to borrow 5,000 just to pay bills. They tried to take turns caring for the children, but they were usually both hungry and tired. When Buzz returned to work, it was all on Jennifer. She spent nearly all day and some of the night taking care of the kids. No one was more relieved than she when they finally grew to children. The stress had really been getting to her. She took a job as a teacher so she could be home when they were, but money was still tight (especially since they had to buy beds for the kids). Buzz wondered how his life had gotten so complicated. His wife had died leaving him three sons to raise, his son Ripp got abducted and left home after Buzz refused to have aliens in his home, his girlfriend (Bella) had been abducted (thanks to Tank tricking her into stargazing every night) and left him after he got angry about the alien baby, he became a drunk, went to rehab, remarried, and had four more kids. To further complicate things, his son Buck had married an alien hybrid (Jill Smith), his son Ripp had two alien hybrid children and was pregnant with a third, and Tank got a girl pregnant (Ginger Newson) before college and refused to marry her. He even left Buzz with the task of raising the kid until he finished college. Now that he is nearly an elder, he is hoping life will calm down. Lucky for him, he helped blow up a satellite and got a 50K bonus (never seen that chance card before but the timing was great). Now he can retire and relax a bit. His new family is in the spoiler button.

You would not want to see my test hoods Andrew, I often delete them along with the test sims!

I have this family in Veronaville. The immediate household consists of Dad, Mom and one female Child Sim named Dyria and a Teen female named Ilfana. Mom and Dad also have an eldest son named Zander whom is an adult and living on his own.

Since both girls are getting up there, I decided to let Mom and Dad fulfill their mutual wants and try for a baby. She got pregnant, which was all fine and dandy. Come delivery time, the Twins, Trips and Quads prompt comes up asking me whether I wanted the original number, random number or to pick the number. I decided to take a chance and randomize it. After all, I typically got either single births or twins whenever I decide to randomize it in the past...

Guess who has quadruplets now? Lol. Three boys and one girl. Needless to say, my family had to move into a bigger house tonight.

You'll want to check combinations as well, parent(s) with a 9am start and a 3pm finish, so the carpool and school bus turn up at the same time. I've had issues on a 1xN lot where the carpool for both parents turned up at the same time as the school bus, and because the carpool was there first, blocking the bus's arrival, one parent wouldn't leave the lot as the children were still present, that then caused the pool car to wait until 9am, which caused the school bus to drive straight through the lot without stopping to pick up the children

That can happen on 1 by 1 lots, there isn't anything that can be done about it. You just have to get the first sim to get into their car pool/bus quickly. Normally one will arrive then once it leaves the other will arrive.

I'm currently testing food related hacks with 6 sims.

Well this update was a bit sporadically done due to me getting some side affects from the penicillin I was taking from my abscess tooth infection which kept me more in bed then being able to play. Mostly I tried to get things matched up to the spoilers and shifted through SimPE looking at the townie list to see who i wanted to fit certain side characters and then making models for future main cast characters to be introduced. So here we go.

- Baron invited over Kaylynn before school to celebrate a break in his getting into the underbelly of downtown mob life.

- Orlando Jessup shows up at the door and Kaylynn and Baron are both caught by surprise for different reasons. Baron realizes the guy who is his boss is a teen and Kaylynn wonders what the hell her half sibling has up his sleeve by showing up here in downtown.

-Orlando asks if there's truth to the rumors of Baron betraying him and when Baron stays silent Orlando warns Kaylynn that the "others" will be arriving soon and to know ahead of time where she stands.

-Baron fans the flames by proposing that he and Kaylynn should postpone their celebration until later that day and make a date of it and Orlando is not amused and leaves in a huff.

-Residents of Bluewater are still furious with Malcolm over his selling of the businesses that have decimated the community and he realizes that their trust is a commodity he no longer has.

-An interesting slip of the mouth by Gilbert Jacquet alerts Malcolm that his former company is going to try to force him out of town and Gilbert tells him that maybe he should leave with some dignity attached and Malcolm steadfastly refuses saying he wont go down without a fight.

-The Ramirez's are surprised when Tessa is brought home by Social Services during the school day and start working on their cover story.

- While on their date Kaylynn reveals that her half siblings are on a mission to find and bring their father, Jon Tricou home to reclaim their rightful territory in downtown mob life and she worries what this will mean for Baron.

- Lisa strays from their story when pressed by the police and tries to blame Checo for Tessa's behavior in a moment of desperation leading Checo to be taken in for questioning.

-Later that night while trying to get Tessa to come inside for dinner the girl has a meltdown in the middle of the street screaming that she's Jessa not Tessa as curious neighbors watch and Lisa crumbles in despair now that it's in the open.

- A certain black haired supermodel arrives at Crypt O Night Club and irritates everyone with her "diva" behavior but is overheard saying she would like to make the area her permanent home.

So just in case your wondering on who you should be keeping track of so far
Main Cast:
Baron Ravencroft
Kaylynn Dobson
Malcolm Landgraab
Tessa Ramirez
The Diva
*Orlando Jessup (non contract for the moment)

UPCOMING

I would but I'd count that as cheating in my game. At least knowing I tried at a certain point and not having it happen makes me feel better. I can just pretend that they overcompensated for not being able to have more children by burying themselves in their work After all if every sim achieved their LTW it wouldn't be as fun. Its why I started using Katya's rules in my game; everything was always 'perfect'


I had a lovely time taking care of quadruplet toddlers at the Landgraab household. And by lovely, I mean miserable! One baby? Easy peaesy. Twins? Managable. Triplets? Barely manageable if I have three adults that way each one is assigned to a toddler. QUADS?! Well I've never had them before so I don't have a system for that. Kate's mother moved in because they really needed the extra help. Kate and Marcus both took vacation time off in order to be with the toddlers. They even hired a butler in the meantime because they don't have time to clean and cook. Heck they barely had time to sleep and do anything non baby related. But they sure did want to woo-hoo a lot, not sure why after dealing with all those kids. I may to have to put her on birth control the next time I play them because with my luck it'll be another set of quads. Then to make matters worse Kate's mother passed away. Kate was so caught up with one of the babies that she didn't even notice the Grim Reaper was upstairs picking Leah up. I have a couple days left with the toddlers and with Leah gone, I'm not sure I can teach everyone what they need. Let me just say I cannot wait for them to age up into children.

Well my young adults over at Brainania decided to make things interesting. The first 4 have arrived and having fun and I am in no rush to hook them up as plenty of others will be arriving and in my usual fashion I don't have any idea who they might like because those 10 days as teens was spent slogging away for scholerships.

After a trying breakfast with Anna, Adam and Tommy (Anna was being a brat, which wasn't improved by Tommy's attempts at sartorial advice) Samantha Ottomas shooed the kids off to the school bus and went to retrieve the newspaper. She was using one of her many days off today, she decided -- the twins had been driving her up the wall, she was tired, and Tommy made it clear he wanted a birthday party that evening. She quickly forgot these troubles, however. Matthew Hart, that young man who'd been nice to her at the hospital, was standing on the sidewalk trying to get another young man to stop panicking quite so much.

"Samantha!" Matthew cried in relief as he saw her. He launched into a meandering explanation of how he'd been fired ("thanks to this idiot," he said, and kicked Romeo when the latter tried to protest) and they hadn't been able to hitch a ride farther than Pleasantview, so could he and his friend stay here for a few days? "We've got our own tent," he finished, putting on a pathetic look. Samantha was a bit disgruntled for having been ignored so long, but couldn't just leave this nice young man on the street, so she invited him in for leftover breakfast. "Keep your mouth shut about Bottom and we have it made," Matthew muttered to Romeo as soon as Samantha was far enough back toward the house not to be able to hear him. "Unless you have any better suggestions?"

Peter thought Samantha was overly compassionate, but when he asked about Matthew's previous job and found out it was as a groundskeeper, he decided the lads could stay if they were useful. The house was a dump, the yard was worse, and he needed help installing the shower that would turn the downstairs bathroom into another much-needed three-quarter bath. Matthew agreed, and while Samantha went to take a well-deserved nap in bed, they imposed some order on the house. The shower was installed, most of the detritus of bottles left over from when the twins were toddlers was cleaned up, and some of the weeds were removed from the yard. Dakota got a security job, and by the time Sharla got home, Peter had gone to join Samantha (only for a nap, amazingly!) while Matthew was trying to be useful by making grilled cheese in preparation for the return of the youngsters.

Poor Sharla walked in the door to find the stove she'd been so against getting in flames, while Matthew and Romeo screamed and were unable to step away from it long enough to grab the phone and call the fire department. Sharla shoved Romeo out of the way, but as she reached for the phone, the counter it was sitting on caught fire. Seeing no other choice, she had to face her demons and fight the fire herself. By the time she'd gotten the stove out, Matthew had realized he was being shown up by a teenage girl, and so got the nerve to tackle the burning counter himself. The fire was soon extinguished, and Sharla felt strangely like a weight had lifted off her shoulders. So what if she had to wear her hair hanging over her face to hide the scars? So what if someone was just kicking the the trash can over as she looked toward the window (Bottom Summerdream is following Matthew, apparently)? So what if she encountered a very sombre-faced Lee Haggarty when she went to pick up the trash from the tipped can?

Of course, Sharla didn't know what was going on with the new guests. When Adam, Anna, and Gallagher Newson -- who they'd brought home from school -- were playing outside at sundown, they did notice a pointy-eared townie man with strange clothes and dusky-blue skin, but as children, they just thought it an amusing sight. Little could they imagine what Bottom's wrath and power was releasing into their world... (Yes, I have genetic-towniefied unnatural skintones as well as human-spectrum, and have a vague fae-invasion idea to justify them showing up. This guy really did a creepy walkby at the right house!) Anna decided to help arrange Tommy's party, as doing so meant she could control the guest list...so Dora walked onto the lot at the same time as Jodie Larson showed up on her broom, leading to some horror on Dora's part. She also invited Gabriella and Gavin Newson. Peter, upon finding out the Newson's past, decided it would be a charitable act to invite kids from the orphanage Gallagher had talked about to the party. He hoped such an act would get his mother to stop flipping out about a witch having been invited to his home; since the orphanage kids were chaproned by none other than Erin Beaker, it provided a distraction, but didn't actually make Dora feel any less strongly about him allowing his children to consort with what she saw as abominations. She would really have had something to say if she had realized that Jill Barrett was not merely a party guest; Sharla had had the nerve to ask the hottest (and only out bisexual) girl at school on a date under cover of her little brother's party.

As Tommy grew up into a boring-looking Knowledge-Romance teen who wanted to be a world-class dancer, Romeo was finally understanding Lee's roundabout hinting as to what had happened after Romeo fled the Capp Manor. Public meltdown was averted by Lee begging Jill and Sharla to help him keep Romeo from doing something stupid, so the mourning lover was gagged with a large chunk of cake and hauled upstairs "to calm down" as Sharla explained to the rest of the party. There he proceeded to mope and cry, while Sharla and Jill took keeping watch on him as an excuse to flirt away from the rest of the crowd. They found his screams of, "I defy you, stars!" more funny than anything else, though Sharla was saddened when Lee explained the whole story to her.

~

Escalus Prince felt the smart of recent events strongly, and not just in the whip-marks on his back. After a day of pruning apple trees, trying to teach Lillian to walk, and telling off newly-adult Scout for trying to tear up Lillian's toys, he finally got the chance to have Paris come over for the lecture he deserved. Dora gloated as Escalus furiously reminded Paris that life was not a game; Paris retorted that he knew it wasn't -- if it was, he wouldn't have had to do what he did. "If we had extra lives I'd have told Tybalt to get lost!" he shouted at his father.

"Tell that to Juliette, " Escalus snapped. "Or Chloe. Or me or Chloe's father, for that matter. As far as I'm concerned, your attempt to placate the Capps caused four deaths." Paris looked befuddled, so Escalus explained, "Juliette was carrying twins. And while I understand that you and Chloe weren't ever likely to actually bother getting married, I would have liked to get to meet my grandchild." Dora thought happily about how pleased she was about both recent events and how angry they'd made Escalus at his son.

Due to this, when preparations began for the Prince-Ottomas wedding in the church across the the street in the dark hours before dawn, Paris was steadfastly refusing to be his father's best man. The tragic day had made Escalus willing to compromise in order to marry Dora, and the new vicar Eric Swain seemed a nice young man to both of them. Chester Gieke, Escalus' partner in humiliation, was flustered but pleased to be asked to step in in Paris' absence, and the entire Ottomas family was there. Anna, despite preferring to wear a blue hand-me-down soccer uniform for everyday, gladly donned a bridesmaid dress when she found out that while she had to wear a wig for the occasion, it came with a pearl diadem. Sharla wore a dress too short for church in protest at being considered too attention-getting to be a bridesmaid. While even Dora had to admit that David's purple smoking jacket suited him as he gave her away, the other Ottomas males wore plain suits that made Chester's white tux look silly...but wait, where was Tommy?

The Ottomas known to her family as Tommy sat in the back of the church, peering through strands of hair that looked satisfyingly unlike the combed-out long boy's style she normally sported. The wedding had been a good choice of venue to debute...what should this new identity be called? Thomasina? Tammy? At any rate, nobody seemed to care about Tommy's absence, and nobody seemed to care that there was a strange girl in a white dress lurking on the edges of the wedding party. However, discretion would still be a good idea, and so the lurker hurried out after the ceremony, avoiding her grandmother's curious watching of the crowd as she went to play basketball in the parking lot. (In a white dress -- not a great idea. But yes, my decustomising select CC clothes paid off perfectly; I'd suspected Tommy didn't fit to the gender binary the Ottomas family would prefer from the moment I noticed his fondness for outlandish outfits, and given the opportunity, he made it clear for himself.)

After cake and dancing, Anna started getting bored and tantrumy again. Ew, why would Granny rather be kissing Mr Prince (or Grandpa Prince, as she was now being told to call him) than dancing with her? Looking for a chance to make trouble, Anna headed for the kitchen to see if there was more cake to grab...and found her big brother David kissing the vicar! While she didn't see the significance of it at all, or understand the contributions that toasts to the wedding might have had in this, Anna found the sight hilarious. Luckily for family harmony, she thought it was a better private joke than one to blurt out to everyone.

Despite Dora's dislike of witches, the High Good Witch showed up twice -- once to bless the ceremony with good weather and beautiful light, then to do the same to the happy couple as they went off in their honeymoon limo. When they got back, they headed home, taking those of the wedding group (the just-for-fun outing to get the guests to all stay on the lot) who were still hanging around the church with them. Unfortunately for Chester, it was of course dark at the house, and Stella Terrano was on her first night of haunting. Chester got spooked by her nearly as soon as he arrived, and Escalus was next. Dora, the one actually responsible for Stella's death, suffered no haunting as she went to give the nanny hired to look after Lillian during the wedding a tirade for spoiling the girl. The new Mrs Prince had no patience for her stepdaughter, and quickly removed her from her high chair and shut her back in her crib.

~

Dirk Dreamer couldn't understand why Lilith wasn't answering the phone. He'd gotten back from work with a promotion and wanted to tell her about it, but no answer...where could she be that she wasn't answering the phone at all? He even called people she'd mentioned knowing in Strangetown, but they hadn't heard from her either... Feeling a creepingly horrible certainty something bad had happened to her, he asked her cousin Lucy Burb to sneak out with him. She was much younger than him, but he'd met her at one of Lilith's parties, so maybe she knew something...

While this was going on, Darren had invited Cassandra on a date that, while tentative, did get them kissing again. While she had no intention of telling him her children's true paternity, she did make it clear she wasn't on good terms with Don at all, and Darren allowed himself a little hope. After the date ended with a tender kiss, Darren opened the business to try to sell her "Toil of the Morning". She bought it, but had no patience at the cash register and tore it up and threw it on the floor. While she did pay Darren for the damage, he was insulted -- he could never make that exact picture again. Didn't she understand what the process of creating true art was? Perhaps it's lucky that he didn't notice that the open business had attracted the Delarosas, who were having WooHoo on Dirk's bed as Darren cleaned up the mess...

Lucy was glad to show off the bright-yellow sports car she'd somehow gotten hold of, but knew nothing about Lilith's whereabouts. Dirk only felt worse as he lurched from the car to the fridge to stuff his face when he got home, and then to the bed he would have been upset by the use of had he known...

Ooh, love the drama of it!! It seems to me like Michel and Grace are the better match (I love Knowledge-Family couples), and it's sweet that they're both so shy yet clearly into each other. It sounds like the thing with Rachel was a fluke. If it was my game, I would probably let it play out and see who seems to gravitate more towards each other/roll wants about each other in the future. Can't wait to hear about how it works out!

The dad sim that was dreading having any more babies (it was his Fear to have a baby born) seems to have done a 180 after the birth of the second set of twins (my first boy and girl twins in TS2 ever!). After buying the necessary cribs and changing table, he rolled that wants to have 10 children (not gonna happen dude) and to dance with the mother. The mom is still very meh on the whole thing though.

@joandsarah77 - what is the portal checker? It is a mod? Or do you just get your test sim a job and check that the carpool can still come. Or have a test sim child and check to see whether the school bus comes?

EDIT:

Nevermind, I should have actually read the remaining posts before asking the question.

Yes, I like knowledge-family couples and they are both quite similar, shy and tidy. I am thinking of removing those red hearts. In real life I don't think Rachel would fall in love with him over one cheek caress. It's just with Maxis coding being what it is, it only takes one flirt at BFF level for red hearts to go flying. The other two (Grace and Michel) had only just reached friend level the day before. I have installed no instant love and might even try testing what happens then. I really don't want the girls getting mad at each other, I think Rachel would be telling Grace to go for it and telling Michel to cut it out and stop going all family sim on her.

@NewSimgirl2011 The portal revealer is here: http://modthesims.info/d/251392 It makes portals visible so you can check that they are all there or move them if need be. On a 1 by 1 I don't think there is room for two vehicles to arrive at once otherwise they would overlap. If for some reason a shrunk lot has lost a portal you can use a buyable one. It's mostly people who build on shrunk lots that would use this, but it would also be useful if a player has accidentally deleted a portal with moveobjects on.

Thanks Jo, never knew about that. Will download that.

A lot is going on at the Jackson household. Luna Grey had moved in to care for her sister's twin children and took twin boys Liam and Liander back to live with their father when the sister and her husband were killed by plague. Well, all the children were teens now, one was married to Tosha go, the other was in love with Luna, and Luna was pregnant with an alien baby while she is half alien herself. Anyway, the time came for Luna to give birth and she gave birth to a S3 girl with black hair and alien eyes she named Nevaeh. The household was wracked with illness, everybody sick but trying hard to care for the baby while at the same time going to work and school so that they could maybe afford another home before Nevaeh got too used to sleeping on the floor. With everybody sick, Tosha heavily pregnant, and a screaming baby, the houehold was in chaos to say the least.

Finally, it became obvious to Tosha that the baby would be coming soon. She was so hungry and tired that she didn't know if she would have the strength to give birth, but Luna and her siblings-in-law were all there to give her support. Right when she felt the very first of the labor pains, Liam collapsed. At first, everybody thought he had just fainted from Tosha being in labor, but the arrival of Grim soon shattered that thought. Luna ran to save her lover as Tosha began to push. As Tosha delivered a little boy, Luna won her lover's life back. Myles took his newborn son into his arms just as Tosha let out another scream. Another baby was on the way! With a little work, another son was delivered. This time, it wasLiander that held the newborn lovingly against his chest as Tosha began pushing yet again. This time, a little girl was born - Timothy, Michael, and Lisa Grey.

Everybody jumped into trying to care for the three newborns and the crying Nevaeh when Jessica came home from school. No soon had she put her homework down did she too collapse to the floor dead. Unwilling to mar his children's brithday with the dead of his twin sister, Myles ran to her rescue when Grim showed up. He won his sister's life back, and then got to work trying to care for his triplets.

It was more than obvious now that the family needed a new house, and fast. There was only room for three beds in the entire house, and no room for cribs. Yet there was no houses on the market. The only chance the family had was to have a house built, but that would take some time. Either way, Luna applied for a very large loan, hoping that she would be able to get a house started that would suit her family's needs at least a little better than the house they lived in now. Being part of the Grey family, she was granted the loan without any fuss. Now she just has to get a house built as soon as possible for her little family before social services decided that the family wasn't fit to care for four young infants.