You guys are always giving me a hard time about putting out so many challenges, I thought I'd share with you one of my REJECTED challenges! This is one I pretty much finished and then decided not to post

So yep, it does take me a while to come up with valid ideas lol.


CHALLEGE: YOURS, MINE, AND OURS
̕Introduction – This is based on both the movie in the late 60s and the remake in 2005. The slightly modified version for this challenge is you have two parents, a single mother who has 7 children and a single father who has 7. They fall in love and marry ending up with 14 kids (and two adults) in their home. They are free to have additional children should you desire.

Mods Required – In order to do this challenge, you will have to have a mod that allows you to set the household number to higher than 8. Master Controller/Woohooer from NRaas both have that ability. Also, portrait panel (another mod from NRaas) is a necessity. The mover mod helps but I don’t think it’s a must have. I essentially created each parent with their 7 children as a separate family and then merged them into one large home (I used a modified version of the doll house available under residential houses you can place in edit town. With both families merged, portrait panel did a beautiful job of giving me two lists of sim portraits.

Background -- An artsy, free spirited mother of 7 falls in love with a “military man” with 7 children of his own! Initially, the children do not get along with the “other side” which means lots of fights, pranks, and the like take place. This makes life absolute hell for the parents! How do you raise 14 (possibly more) children to be well-balanced, get good grades, and become productive members of society? More importantly, how the heck do you pay the grocery bill?

Goals –
1. Have happy, well cared for children with grades at a B or above.
2. Organize your home and family (keep your family life from descending into chaos)
3. Raise all children to young adult and have them become productive members of the community with a job and a place of their own.
4. Participate in all holidays as well as some extras (see below).
5. Coordinate family time/events.

Gameplay –
1. Seasons should be set to normal if you have them.
2. Aging should be set to normal
3. Pets are fine
4. You may start in any town you choose.
5. After you create your house, lower your money to 1,000 simoleons using the “familyfunds” cheat.

The Families –
Mom – Artistic (perhaps sculptor/painter or both), Family Oriented, Nurturing, Natural Cook
Mom’s Kids – 3 Teens, 3 Children, 1 toddler
Dad – Athletic, Loves the Outdoors, Neat, Handy, Family Oriented (or Frugal)
Dad’s Kids – 2 teens, 4 children, 1 toddler)
Note: You can choose genders and traits for the children.

The Home –
This family is not wealthy. They are quite frugal, clip coupons, etc. In the earlier movie, they purchased an old Victorian home (a bit of a fixer upper). Most children’s rooms contained two bunk beds (with occasional exception). Boys and girls cannot sleep in the same rooms and you cannot have more than 6 rooms (including a room for mom/dad). Using 4 rooms with the two bunk-bed system will sleep 16. The other room can be for infants/toddlers. It should feel cramped, but not overly so. You can have up to 4 all-in-one bathroom units (I created a bath on my 3rd floor that had the four units) in your house, but the rest of the bathrooms should be normal. You’re going to want at least 3-4 bathrooms!

Note: For a harder challenge, don’t create the bathroom with the all-in-one units. Just have four regular bathrooms!

Note: Before you complete your house and start the challenge, read the TRAVEL section below as there are passenger restrictions on vehicles and you are required to have certain vehicles to start.

Mom’s Role – Mom is a stay-at-home mother who does her artwork as an extra income for the family. Her primary job is caring for the children. However, since mom is artsy, if you wanted her to take a job at the salon part-time, that might be a good alternative for her to work evenings while dad and teens are home to care for smaller children. To keep food costs down, you may have a garden that mom (and perhaps one or two teens) take care of. That is optional. Mom is finally the family cook and you should obtain the various recipes for her as she levels up.

Dad’s Role – Dad is the money maker. It is important to get him into his career and advancing quickly. In the movies, dad is military. If that doesn’t appeal to you at all, try something else. Due to the challenge that lies ahead, I’d recommend dad having a traditional rabbit-hole job instead of something from ambitions. Just because dad works doesn’t mean he gets to come home and be a bum! He helps out with the kids when he’s home and he’s not above making the occasional meal to give mom a break, etc.

Travel—Sorry, you don’t get to pile 14 kids and 2 adults into a sports car. To add a touch of realism, I’m putting a restriction on passengers per vehicle. Standard cars (excluding two-seaters) may hold up to 5. Mini-vans, SUVs, etc. are assumed to have a 3rd row (even though it may not show) and can take 7 passengers. Here is what you must start with:

Mom: Wornado Triage (Station Wagon) – Seats 7
Dad: Vorn P328 (Extended Cab Truck) – Seats 5
Teen: Big Lemon (Used Sedan) – Seats 5

Choose your oldest teen to receive the Big Lemon and teach them to drive immediately. You may upgrade your vehicles as you have the money. When you attend a family event (i.e. Church), mom will click to go to church with (then choose 6 kids), then dad will do the same and choose 4 kids. The eldest teen will take whoever is left (up to 4 additional passengers).

Daily Event – Who’s to say that there isn’t a crisis to be dealt with every day in a house of 14 kids! Roll every day before the kids go to school to see what is going to happen that day. You can use websites like random.org or a dice application, etc. You’ll have to roll once for your random event and then roll again to determine which child(ren) are affected (if applicable).

1: Epidemic! All of your children are sick and must be kept home from school today (if today isn’t a school day, they must be kept inside). They’re all going stir crazy and so are you! You must convince the kids to stay in bed as often as possible. They can play video games, nap on the sofa, etc.
2: Two of your younger children (roll to see who) get into an argument which turns into a fight. One bloodies the other’s nose right before the bus arrives! Keep them both home for a bit, give them a talking to, and make sure everyone is cleaned up, and then drive them to school yourself before 10 AM.
3: The school has asked you to pitch in for a bake sale to raise money for the little league team. Bake 5 deserts today (plates of cookies, pies, etc.) and “donate” them to the school (delete them from your inventory).
4: The boys were throwing the football around outside and threw it right through your neighbor’s picture window! Use family funds (familyfunds) cheat to remove 250 simoleons from your savings to replace the window and give the boys in your household extra chores.
5: A local newspaper is very interested in how your family functions on a daily basis and will be at your house at noon to interview you and take some photos. It’s time for a cleaning frenzy! The house must be spotless.
6: It’s double coupon day at the market! If you go food shopping today, use the familyfunds cheat to give yourself half back (i.e. if you spend 300, give yourself 150 back).
7: Your teens stage a rebellion! Tonight after curfew, ALL of them try to sneak out of the house to go to a party at the public pool (or somewhere else if your town doesn’t have one). If any get caught, give them a good talking to and hand out a bit of discipline! No laptop for a week young lady! (lol)
8: Oh no! The fridge died last night and everything inside has spoiled! Throw EVERYTHING out of your fridge.
9. Dad’s got that sparkle in his eye! Try for baby one time.
10. One of your children (roll to see who) skips school today! You’ll need to give him/her a good punishment. This is a bad sign for their grades.
11. Your kids want to thank you for all that you do for them so they have decided to do everything for themselves today! The teens will take care of the younger children, kids will do extra chores, etc.
12. Your teens want their license! Teach at least one to drive today.
13: Mom & dad decided that tonight everyone is going out to eat (wow that’s going to be a bill). Pile everyone into your cars and drive to the cheapest meal in town.
14: You catch your eldest teen daughter running around with a young adult! You forbid the relationship, but is it too late? Roll 1-2 (or flip a coin) to see if she’s pregnant. 1=Pregnant, 2=Not Pregnant (this only applies if you have the mods to allow teens to get pregnant). If she’s pregnant, pause the challenge and have her try for baby. Woohooer can be set to do this with strangers). Since she is just a teen, you will have to decide if you’re going to raise the baby while she’s in school or if you’re going to make her be responsible.
15: One of your younger children (roll to see who) fell off the monkey bars at school today. The nurse calls and you need to pick him up from school and take him to the hospital for a checkup.
16: Oh no, while everyone was asleep there was a problem with the plumbing in your home and you have no running water until the plumber can fix it! This takes place from before your children wake up until 6PM that night. No showering, no using sinks, etc. The plumber charges you 200 simoleons for the job (use familyfunds to remove 200 from your savings).
17: The word has gotten out about your massive family and the neighborhood took up a collection. Add 300 simoleons to your family’s funds.
18: One of your children (roll to see who) has wreaked havoc at school and got suspended for two days!
19: Mom has had enough! She’s going to a hotel (put a resort in your neighborhood or take her out of the house and have her sleep at a friend’s, go shopping, spa, whatever you can afford). During this time, dad will have to take time off of work and take care of the family by himself!
20: It’s a special family outing day (yay). EVERY member of your family MUST participate. Expect to spend 2-3 hours at a community lot (festival, museum, pool, etc.) with mom, dad, and all kids.

Being A Family—Your household is a very traditional family. To meet your goal of having well-balanced children, you must complete certain tasks regularly. Keep in mind doing anything with 14 kids (even just having dinner) can be a 4 hour event.

--Daily Meals: Your children must get two meals on school days and 2 meals and a snack on weekends. That means mom must start cooking EARLY (I started at 4AM in the morning) and prepare two full meals (i.e. pancakes and waffles). Keep in mind that mom or dad must grocery shop for the family. If something has a price on it then you don’t have the ingredients to make it. Meals are a big deal in your house so shop often! My BIG advice here, especially in the mornings, is to NOT call everyone to the meal. You’ll spend hours watching them try desperately to get to the plate. Prepare the first meal, summon dad and the teens down to eat while the younger kids shower and dress. Then prepare meal #2 and send the teens up to shower/dress and call the younger kids to eat. You need to run a tip top ship. Be organized or you will go insane!

--Sunday Services: You can skip this if you do not want your family to be Christian (or another faith). Otherwise, build a public church in your town and make your entire family attend. You must have the family fed and dressed in their church clothes (yep, that means everyone has to have a set of clothing separate from super formal). And be at the church by 9 AM. Services end at 11 AM. If you have a podium, have dad get up there and deliver a sermon if you like. I strongly advise turning off free will here if you want sims to sit in a pew for 2 hours without running off.

--Sunday Dinner: This is a pain..just saying that up front. Get ready to pull your hair out! Sunday dinner takes place at 6PM every Sunday and everyone must be at the table and seated. BIG TIP: Set it up as a party and invite one other person (friend of the family). Turn OFF free will. Make everyone take a seat at the dinner table except mom and a teen or two (or mom and dad) as they become the servers. At a party, you can click on a plate of food and it should say “serve food”. You will then take the food to whomever you chose, they will accept it and sit back down. Just a suggestion. I tried calling everyone to a meal once at around 7PM and by 2AM I had kids that were STILL trying to eat.

--Birthdays: Birthdays must be celebrated fully. Cake, balloons, and gifts! Each child must receive at least 3 birthday gifts (these could be in the form of toys, etc.). At least one of them must be handed to them as a gift they can open. For example, if your toddler becomes a child, you can gift them a teddy bear and put a new gaming system and TV in their room. The gifts can be as cheap or expensive as you can afford. If possible, throw them a birthday party and invite some of their friends!

--Holidays: Holidays must be celebrated! For Leisure Day, take the family to the beach (don’t forget the hot dogs). For Spooky Day, everyone goes trick or treating and you should have a feast or costume party. What better way to celebrate Snowflake Day then taking the family to a small cabin you own in the woods where the Christmas tree and all the decorations are waiting there for the kids and mom gets up early and makes a huge breakfast, and later, a holiday feast! Obviously celebrating Snowflake Day at home with all the decorations is fine too!

--Camping: Once you have enough money for that cabin in the woods (or even just a small plot of land with trees, a campsite, and a fishing pond); take your kids camping during the summer (or more often if you like).

--Family Outings: Once a week the family goes out (in force) and does something together. That could be seeing a movie, going to a festival, eating out, or anything else you can think of. It’s a good idea (when you’re able) to get at least one of your teens driving to have a third car.

--Date Night: Mom & Dad get one night off a week for four hours. The teens will run the show in their absence. Date night does not have to be the same night each week.

--Family Vacation: At least once every 4 weeks, take the family on a 3 day vacation (if you have seasons, pick a season that you will have your family vacation in. If you have island paradise, you can go to a resort for the 3 days. I’m not certain if you can take children to France or not but that would be awesome!! If you don’t have any expansions that allow for a vacation, then you may skip this.

--Mother’s/Father’s Day: Choose a day in the Spring for mom’s day and a day in the summer for dad’s day. The children must clean the house, teens must prepare meals, and the kids take mom/dad out to dinner that night.

--After-School Activities: Each younger child must have an after-school activity (ballet/scouts).

Making Money—The overall intention of this challenge is for money to be a struggle. This isn’t rags to riches. Its mom and dad working together to make the family a success for 14 children! Other than mom’s artwork and optional part-time job and dad’s pay check, the only other way you can make money are family-related tasks (i.e. the younger kids have a bake sale, or perhaps Jimmy, your teen son loves the guitar and plays for tips once in a while, etc. Teens may have part-time jobs if you choose.

You Had Them, They Didn’t—Teens are available to help but they should have time for themselves, to pursue their interests, etc. Don’t overuse them.

Chores—Once a toddler becomes a child they must be given a daily chore (beyond cleaning up after themselves and making their own beds). All beds must be made before kids leave for school. Example chores for younger kids would be cleaning the dinner dishes (with this many in the family, that could be two kids’ chore), walking the dog, taking out the trash, etc. Teens can be given the shore of babysitting, changing the occasional diaper, raking leaves, helping in the garden, etc.

Growing Up—As your children become young adults, you must move them out. Get them a nice job (or send them to college if you really want to), buy them their own car (excluding the sloppy jalopy and big lemon) and send them on their way.

Once you have kids out of the house, add the following to your daily events and roll 1 – 25 instead of 1 – 20 each day:

21: One of your grown children called and is low on cash and asks to “borrow” 100 simoleons from you. That’s money you’ll never see again…
22: Your son/daughter calls saying he misses your home cooking. Invite him/her to dinner for the next 3 nights!
23: Your grown child is in jail! You were their one phone call. Not only do you have to pay $200 bail but they are confined to your house for the next week until their hearing. To make things worse, they are fired from their job (move them back into your house and have them quit their job. They cannot leave the house for 7 days at which time they can get a new job and you can send them back to their old house). If they had any children, you must take permanent custody of them (good grief) as your son/daughter is declared unfit.
24: One of your grown children is expecting! (The easiest way of accomplishing this is moving them back into your home, get them married if you like, and get them pregnant before returning them to their home). Looks like you’ll be doing some babysitting!
25: One of your grown children hits the lottery for a modest prize. They insist that you take some of the winnings and give you $500!


Family Get Togethers—Once you have children grown and out of the house, you must hold at least one visit per week. This can be accomplished by inviting them to Sunday dinner or having them join you for the family outing that week, or just have them come over and visit with mom and dad and whatever kids are home. Should someone die, the family must come together for a funeral gathering. Just because they are out of the house doesn’t mean they aren’t your children! Call them at least three times per week to see how they’re doing.


COMPLETING THE CHALLENGE—
Once you have raised all of your children well (meaning they must have graduated with a B or better) and you’ve met all the requirements of the challenge in the process, you can consider it a success and enjoy bein

Now why would you not share this with us, Misty? I love this. ._.

I don't know...I guess I don't see it as unique. I always try to wow people with challenge ideas that haven't been done to death (not saying I do that successfully, just that I try to lol).

You should see my challenges I have written (or started writing) that never made it here. I have a welfare challenge that pretty funny but I thought it was again, not unique enough.

Is this challenge overly- unique like some of your others? No, but it's still fun. ^^

Thank you, but the thought that I might put out a challenge that is too much like another challenge really bugs me. I hate to see people change a couple small details and essentially put out something mostly based on another person's ideas. I don't think this one particularly falls into that category but I imagine someone, somewhere, has a challenge with kids in the double digits or at least a very similar family life.

Thanks though. I'm glad you like it!

I'd like to add in two things:
If you have MC, there's an option to 'Pollinate'. It lets you choose a mother, and a father, and then makes the mother pregnant with the father's child, without having to do anything. It might be more ideal and easier for when the children become pregnant. I think it works with teens as well, but I've never tried it.
I'd also like to suggest a piece of cc from aroundthesims3- board games. Growing up, Thursday was my family game night, and I'll be doing that in-game as well.

Oh man, I can't wait to try (and rage over) this challenge!

Rage over is correct. I went back to playing this challenge just for fun...omg...Just simple things like having enough ways for kids to get downstairs without causing a backup at the top of the stairs is a pain.

I think I need to build a new house, all one level, with six bedrooms...or maybe two levels with multiple stair cases...who the heck knows.

Big family challenges abound for Sims 2 and 3; I can see why you held back on putting your own version out, but really, you've turned the thing up to 11.

Against my better judgement and fully knowing this challenge will drive me batshit, I have to try it. Getting out my day planner...and reflecting that I have never needed the level of organization and scheduling in my actual life that I'll gladly put into a sims challenge. Meh, that's a thought for another time.

Would this new mod here on MTS be a useful thing for the large dinners?

https://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=522420

ETA: I just reread and noticed you used the Doll's house from the bin. Yeah, that thing looks like it should be so ideal for families like this until you have to get the bunch of them down the spiral staircases at the same time.

OMG that mod is amazing!
Also yes you are 110% right about the doll house...I would get about 10 kids on the school bus and the other 4 would still be stuck at the top of the spiral stairs and got scolded for missing school!

If you're going to have a multi level house, you MUST have more than one way downstairs/upstairs. If anyone finds the perfect house for this challenge, please post a link to it! Thanks

There's one in the bin from Generations called Kid Tested Mother Approved, I think. Convert the garage to an extra bedroom, expand the central living area (dining space is the single biggest flaw of this house, but it can be fixed), and fix the tacky dreadful color schemes, which are worse than usual, and it's pretty functional for this challenge.

I should have remembered that instead of spending two hours to build a three-story house.

Can't wait to try this!
I'm intimidated by the random daily roll, though. It's only going to make things more hectic.
What suggestions would you have if I was to add grandparents into the mix?

Grandparents sounds fine. If the daily roll bothers you, try every other day.

No, sorry. Not that it bothers me, just that this is the first challenge I've played with a daily roll. I'm kind of looking forward to that part.
I'm guessing it's okay to add a few numbers to the roll to acknowledge the grandparents, then.

Between Vector giving all 16 sims the flu at the same time and the same two kids having a fistfight and ending up on their mum's shitlist every single day, I haven't needed the randomized crisis so much.

I've rolled it, anyway, on the off-chance my family gets some cash. The mother has almost no time for painting, though she's getting a bit more leisure for it now that everyone's healthy and child-or-older. I even tried giving her the NRaas Homemaker career because they were going broke from restaurant bills (get that one a lot), but since most of the chores that pay off on that are done by kids in the morning, she hasn't made much more than $100 that way, either, so far.

Honestly I see grandparents as an "easy mode" approach to this challenge if they live with you (which is fine) but if I were going to alter the daily rolls at all I'd make them more challenging, not less so, because you already have the huge benefit of extra adults in the house. If you're not having the grandparents live with you, then I would just pick a couple numbers and re-write them to add some aspect of the grandparents.

I think thee is a benefit to having them not live with you. You can pile 4 or 5 kids into the car, take them to gamma and grampa's house, and dump them off to give yourself a break! Unfortunately that won't help you with toddler's.

Speaking of which, if you have your kids at other houses and it's getting late, if you want to really kick things up a notch, have a parent get in the car and go get them. Would be more realistic lol.

If you want mom to do the chores, that's fine. I was thinking along the lines that poor mom has enough to do, but if you're going to use the homemaker career, feel free to edit the rules a bit to make it a viable income if you'd rather go that route instead of painting.

I had the same problem. Very difficult to find time to paint.

I was never planning on having the grandparents live there (without Generations and bunk beds, 16 sims is enough, trust me).
But extended family members often ask for favors as well, which was the plan with the extra roll numbers.

So I started, and, well, it's a rocky start.
I accidentally gave the mom 4 children and 2 teens to start instead of 3 of each, so I planned to age up Peter (one of the children) on the second day.
Poor Peter aged up on his own before he could get to the cake (and before everyone had eaten dinner). Now that I think of it, they never got to the cake...
I play with Nraas StoryProgression, and the kids get Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays off during the summer. I have a feeling that things get easier when the kids are in school most of the day.

As a general tip, when I made the families, I made the first parent, grabbed a sim from my sim bin of the opposite gender, and played with genetics between the two of them until I had six kids. Then I deleted the sim from the sim bin from the family, and made a set of identical twins. All seven kids look related with minimal effort.

The dad's trying for the top of the police career, and I might send him off on "missions" later... leaving poor Mom on her own. And he wants another kid... I'm going to hold that off for as long as possible.

For the most part, I'm leaving everyone on free will, and if the teens help out with the toddlers, I won't complain.

When I play this challenge I feel very chaotic! I have not mastered being a mom of 14 with occasional help from dad. My biggest tips are start evening meal EARLY (like 5pm while kids are doing homework) then as they finish, let them get food on their own. By 8 I check the little kids and see who hasn't ate. If someone is hungry I send them to grab a plate and the rest are sent to the various bathrooms to potty and bathe and then to bed. I had this one child (patterned after the young Harry Potter) who kept refusing to go to bed and kept running to mom trying to get her to read him a story. I finally figured out that something was blocking him from getting into bed after I thoroughly cursed about him for 10 minutes lol! Please post your survival ideas here!

I admit I went into S3PE and modded out the autonomous read to sleep/request story; left to their own devices, children will endlessly spam request anyone teen or older, take someone else's bed when they finally get someone to read to them, and it's all just a nuisance to deal with.

Anything like a set mealtime has been nigh impossible to coordinate; other than the Sunday meal, I just make sure there's a breakfast food and a dinner type meal available every day, plus a vegetarian alternative, if needed, for a couple of the kids who have that trait.

All I really do is pause my game at 10PM and queue up whatever anyone needs and hope they don't get in each other's way enough to mess that up. Same at 5AM before they start their morning routines. Other than that, some morning or afternoon chores, and making sure their homework gets done, the kids are pretty much on their own.

Have you tried taking out the entire crew for "family night"? That was fun..

EDIT: I always have the one child, the one that looks like Harry Potter in the first movie, he is going to be the friggin death of me. Always takes forever to do something, always checking for monsters and begging for bedtime stories, when we went out he kept taking off. There's always one...he's going to grow up and I'm going to end up rolling the the one where he ends up getting arrested...I can just see it coming. LOL

What would you know? I had never heard about this movie before. But the idea teased my imagination. Could not let it go. And today I just saw that the newer version is showing as a matiné on the TV. So bye, bye cleaning....

This looks interesting I may try once I have finished all the other challenges lol