The Wood Household Skills Project - updated 25 August

[hazelnut]

The wedding was at noon the same day (Misti was in mid-adulthood when she arrived, so they can’t afford to take things slowly). Thanks to the motive mobile, Linden and Misti were awake in time for the ceremony.  It was a big wedding and pretty successful overall.  There was a false start when two of the dogs got underfoot and distracted everyone (in fact, some of the guests wandered off into the house to watch TV and didn’t bother to come back out to watch when the vows were finally exchanged).









The guests even included royalty – of a sort.





“I’m sure Zo looked different the last time I saw her.”



Queen Zo seemed determined to follow them around but finally the bride and groom were alone together…



…and, before long, Misti found herself in a different outfit, taking a sudden interest in pregnancy books…



…and then standing in the living room pulling faces (while her husband spent the evening playing with the dogs, completely unaware that she was in labour two rooms away).



Linden wanted a daughter; Misti wanted a son.  With some help from Nick Knack, they both got their wishes.



Welcome, Laurel…



…and Rowan.

Laurel is excitable and easily impressed.  Rowan is friendly and good.

With four dogs and two babies to look after, as well as working on their charisma whenever they had a free moment, the time flew by and soon the twins were toddlers.





Linden had wished for another child almost at once, so Misti was back in the fat clothes – and getting a craving for watermelon in response to another of his wishes.  And again, she gave birth at home while Linden stayed in another room, oblivious.  At least he was looking after the twins this time.





This is Holly.  She’s a virtuoso like her grandpa Burl and a couch potato.

[hazelnut]

Learning to talk:



Linden: Cooking is fun.  You can make all sorts of nice cakes and puddings.
Laurel: I like pudding!
Misti: But it’s very important to eat healthily. Can you say ‘vegetables’?
Rowan: No.



Linden: You can earn lots of money from cooking, just like daddy.
Laurel: Hmm…
Misti: Love is what really matters.
Rowan: Uv!  (Thinks: that’s a much easier word than silly old ‘vegetables’.)


Misti had been feeling a bit odd recently.  Maybe the stress of coping with all those dogs and small children was getting to her.  She decided to invite Nick Knack over.

“Nick, look at these clothes! I’m acting as if I’m pregnant but I don’t feel like it.  I try to go to work but I can’t get into the building. And I’ve started hearing things.  The other night, I was lying in bed and I heard this little tune – like chimes.”

“Yes, that’s normal for pregnant Sims.”

“Really? I never had that with the twins or Holly.  I thought I must be going mad.”



“You’re definitely pregnant – and it’s another girl, if you’re interested. I think you’re suffering from Glitched Pregnancy Syndrome.  Try a restart and quit your job if necessary… and I think you should have this baby in hospital.”

One restart later, Misti had her pregnancy moodlet (and a new outfit) – although they still wanted her to go into work but sent her home if she tried to enter the building.  She didn't quit her job but did take some unpaid leave (after all, she has done very well out of the spa – they’ve been paying out maternity pay for ages even though she’s not actually been in to work for a single day).



Holly aged up – so now they had three toddlers in the house.

At the end of Linden’s third week in Twinbrook, they had one of those eventful days that sometimes seem to happen in large Sim families.  First, Misti, who had spent the night in the library, maxed charisma.  Then she chatted to the first few people to come in through the doors in the morning and became Super Popular.



Later on, the twins had another birthday.





"Hurry up with the candles, Mum.  Laurel's going to have an accident!"

Laurel became a party animal and Rowan gained a good sense of humour.

Linden was at the diner while the candles were being blown out.  When he emerged, he was a five-star chef.





He’d barely got home when he was called to the hospital – Misti was in advanced labour.





Welcome, Sequoia.  I sometimes thought you wouldn’t make it.

Quoia is friendly and absentminded.

Farthing was well into borrowed time by now (especially when you consider all of her extra time as an adult).  She and Hundred Acre spent one last day together…



…then Grim came.



On Monday, the twins went like snails unwillingly (that is, if snails had school buses).



“Ro! We’re the only kids on this bus… and I don’t like the look of that driver!”

They didn’t think much of the homework, either.



Soon it was time for Holly to join them at school – and for Sequoia to start learning those essential life skills (and, yes, Misti has had her somewhat delayed elder birthday). 





I think Quoia may be the cutest toddler in the game so far.



Holly got insane as her child trait – although couch potato seems to be her defining characteristic at the moment.



“I really wish I could live in a house like that.”


Rowan and Holly are named after the last two Wood Dynasty immortals. The first Holly was a rock star who supermaxed fishing.  Her namesake will share her love of music but not much else – it’s too early in the game to be an angler.  The original Rowan was her son, a politician who supermaxed charisma. This one will be virtually a clone and will probably also supermax, although my plans for this generation are quite vague (I don’t know yet which child will be the heir).

Laurel and Sequoia are new Wood names.

[hazelnut]

The first arrival at Laurel and Rowan’s teenage birthday party was distinctly unexpected.



What kind of an idiot tries to burgle an occupied house during the day, especially one where a party’s about to start?  Not that the guests did anything useful – they just stood outside getting cross that the burglar was stopping them getting through the front door and complaining about the alarm being noisy.





Fortunately, the new policewoman managed to squeeze through and make an arrest while there was still enough party time left for the twins to blow their candles out.





Their new traits are charismatic for Rowan and flirty for Laurel.

Outside, a gatecrasher was lurking in the shrubbery.  Maybe another criminal casing the joint and waiting for the party to finish?  A hospital gown doesn’t seem like the best disguise but I suppose the green blends in – and he’s less obvious than a private eye on a stakeout.



That night, Grim came for Hundred Acre, who’d lived a week past his allotted span.   He was buried in the garden, next to Farthing.



The twins like being at high school – or at least, they like the shorter school day.  They've both signed up for Drama Club and Laurel has a part-time job.  On the downside, the homework’s harder.



“I hate geography.  Why do we have to learn it when we never leave Twinbrook?”
“Ro, you want to be Leader of the Free World.  Don’t you think you ought to know something about the rest of it?”

Soon it was birthday time again.  This household could live on cake quite happily.



Holly became a teenage kleptomaniac.  She popped next door to try out her new abilities and then went straight back to the school to register for both the Music and Drama clubs.  Unfortunately, she has to learn to drive before she can impress her classmates with her VFN Kompensator.





While she was out, Sequoia aged up to child and became a dog person, like her dad.  She was delighted that there was a doggy birthday to celebrate immediately afterwards.  It seems unbelievable that Sitka’s an elder already.



Sequoia had a wish to adopt another dog, so Dog was duly adopted.  She and Sequoia were BFFs almost as soon as she arrived.



Holly’s birthday present was a guitar.



Misti finally reached the top of her part-time career and quit.  Linden thought that was such a good idea that he joined her in retirement.  (OK, I thought it was a good idea.  Unusually for a Sim who’s neither ambitious nor a workaholic, he didn’t get a wish to retire when he aged up to elder.)



Holly has become an incurable prankster since she aged up and would spend all her life grounded if I didn’t keep making her parents let her off the hook.  They do have a point, though – it’s becoming unusual for anyone to have a shower and come out with the same colour hair they went in with.



Farthing and HA have both come back to visit...





...and Farthing seems to have decided to stay.



It’s a little disconcerting to see her drifting across the stairwell or hovering near the kitchen ceiling but I’m glad to have her back – and I think red suits her.






I was surprised that the dogs have red ghosts, given that they had over thirty thousand happiness points each, although most had been cashed in for rewards.  Testing (i.e., gratuitous killing of animals from other games) appears to confirm that animals need 10000 unspent points to become blue ghosts, which seems a bit odd when it’s the total that counts for human Sims.

[Roxanne07]

Great updates! And so many teens/ children/ toddlers! I really like Holly's makeover. Do your pet ghosts actually fly? 

[hazelnut]

Great updates! And so many teens/ children/ toddlers! I really like Holly's makeover. Do your pet ghosts actually fly? 

Thanks.  Holly's style is largely based on the original Holly (she's the second from the right in the picture of the dynasty at the beginning of the story) - but a little odder because she's insane

The ghost dogs mostly float just above the ground and then start behaving like normal animals when they're interacting with the other dogs or the family (or going upstairs, as in the screenshot of HA).  They don't seem to notice that the stairwell is any different from normal floor, though.... and I have no idea how Farthing ended up by the kitchen ceiling - I just happened to notice that she was there one evening. You can see where she was more clearly in this picture:



The next time I checked, she was back to her normal position.

[hazelnut]

This is more of a summary than a proper chapter because I lost most of my screenshots in the Great Deletion Incident (i.e. me being stupid).


The twins had their young adult birthdays a few days early, mostly because I was getting bored, and for the first and only time, the whole family sat down together for a meal.



The next day was graduation: Rowan was valedictorian and most popular; Laurel was voted most likely to be mediocre (rather unkindly, I thought).



After the ceremony, Rowan went off to join the political career as he’d always wanted; Laurel, who’d acquired commitment issues as her last trait and decided to become a heartbreaker, went off to the park to start chatting people up – and dumping them.





That evening, Sequoia aged up to teen.


The day after her two eldest children graduated, Misti was doing the laundry when Grim came for her.  Linden was younger, of course, but at the age of 94, he too had his appointment with Death.  Well, his first one.



Afterwards, I saw that Pogles was barking at Grim but didn’t think anything of it (I’d moved the camera to Laurel and her current Not-Very-Significant Other).  Then the notification popped up that Pogles had saved Linden from death.

The next day, it all happened again – only it was Sitka who saved him this time.







While Grim was still in the house, Laurel took the opportunity to get in some flirting practice.



This left me with a difficult decision: in multi-generation games, I’ve always kept heirs and spouses in the household until their deaths but this time I could see the dogs keeping Linden alive forever.  I like to think of this as Linden’s Revenge – the first Linden was the only mortal in an immortal dynasty; this one was trying his best to be the only immortal in a family with normal lifespans.  The dogs all had age bars that were at least maxed out; Pogles was pushing sixty.  There was soon going to be a lot of mourning.  Reluctantly, I decided that the only solution was to move out Linden and all of the dogs.







They moved into Column Cottage, at 168 Savannah Lane (next-door to the Gooles – but in a different universe).

This meant there was room for Sequoia to start adopting more dogs.





She went round to visit a neighbour, Alexis Westmoreland, whose dog had just had puppies, and we both had a surprise: Alexis was now part of the family – she was Linden’s girlfriend.  For a Story Progression relationship, it was actually surprisingly appropriate:  Linden and Alexis were very close in age and both loved dogs.

Within the week, Linden and Alexis (and all of the dogs) had died.  Rowan visited the mausoleum to collect the tombstones so that they could all be buried in the family plot.

Meanwhile, the current generation of Woods were growing up.  Holly reached young adulthood and became nurturing.  She already had her lifetime wish – Golden Tongue, Golden Fingers – in place but needed a job while she was pursuing it.  With her new trait and SuperNanny reward, she chose to go into the daycare profession.  It had the advantage that all of the others could help her while they weren’t at school or work – although Laurel seemed more interested in drinking juice and dancing.





Soon Laurel, an equal-opportunities heartbreaker, had dumped Cecilia Jones-Brown, her fifth girlfriend and tenth partner, and achieved her lifetime wish.  She moved out with another batch of dogs to 328 Rue de Sterling.





And then there were three.

[RainBeau]

So good to see an update on this story! I love The Ghosts of Twinbrook but I was just wondering today if you were still playing this as well

[hazelnut]

It's sort of on hold for a while because I am mostly concentrating on the Ghosts for the moment.  I've played as far as the next move, so there will be another update some time soon, I hope - but I've lost all of the screenshots for the next chapter, so I want to go back into previous saves and recreate at least the important ones before posting.

[RainBeau]

Ah, that's frustrating. Well I understand your artistic sensibilities in this matter.

[hazelnut]

With Rowan approaching the top of the politics career, the Wood house became a party house.  Rowan threw parties on all of his days off – and often in the evening on work days.  Then Sequoia, who had met and fallen for Thomas Castor, announced that she was going to throw a party, too.  The daycare toddlers were there as well but they didn’t seem to mind particularly.  Unlike the guests.





Now that there was plenty of space freed up in the house, Quoia adopted four more dogs in quick succession and completed her lifetime wish.  Those last few dogs proved to be very expensive.  With Holly’s daycare occupying most of my attention, dog-training slipped into the background and quite a lot of furniture had to be replaced.

The day after she became a Canine Companion, Sequoia married Tom and moved out, taking the dogs with her.





It was a formal wedding, although the groom and most of the guests seemed to have somewhat odd ideas about what constituted a formal outfit.  No-one sat down for the ceremony, either.  Instead, they all milled about getting in the way of my screenshots.  Maybe it only works with chairs, not benches.

I’d forgotten that Thomas Castor is a child at the beginning of the game and so was a lot older than his bride.  Two days after the wedding, he aged up to elder, while Sequoia was still a young adult.

The day after the wedding, Rowan achieved his lifetime wish and celebrated by proposing to Bambi Washington, their next-door neighbour.



It turned out that Bambi wasn’t quite as single as I’d thought.  Her boyfriend, Nicholas Goldstein, turned out to be a long-term partner and the father of Guy and Fatima Washington, who I’d thought were Bambi’s younger siblings instead of her children.  So Rowan acquired an enemy as well as a fiancée.  Bambi must have been a very young mother – her children were young adults and she’d only been an adult for a few days.

Soon after, Rowan and Bambi got married in a private ceremony on the beach.  It was a little out of character for someone who had hosted so many parties – but then Rowan was having a midlife crisis (and had just packed in politics in favour of journalism).



Holly still hadn’t achieved her lifetime wish, even though it’s one of the easier ones in the game.  Her daycare career was threatening to take over her entire life, what with parents ringing up on her days off to ask for emergency babysitting.  She did eventually get a day to herself and spent it in the library, reading charisma books.



She had now finished her requirements and was free to move on.  Her career wasn’t finished yet but she could do that after moving to a new house.  I decided to wait because she was only a couple of days from aging up and if she followed in the twins’ footsteps, she would have a midlife crisis and might roll a wish to move.  So she lived alone in the big house and carried on with her career.



Holly did have a midlife crisis but, of course, she didn’t have a wish to move.  Those only happen to my heirs in legacies and dynasties, who have to stay in the same house.  Still, she did have plenty of wishes she could fulfil.  Like making herself new outfits and hairdos.







And while she was waiting, she looked over her potential spouses.  She had a surprisingly wide choice.


Albert Royale, party dancer; Alfredo Combs, policeman;
Brock Harper, handyman; Garret Boyce, newspaper deliverer


Jack Hammer, another party dancer; Laurence Irizarry, babysitter;
Walter Short, another policeman and Westley Tinsley, another newspaper deliverer

By the time her midlife crisis was over, Holly had reached the top of the daycare career and decided who to marry.


House 3 summary
Skill: charisma

Linden (continued from house 2)
Career: Culinary
LTW: Celebrated Five-Star Chef

Misti
(Traits: daredevil, social butterfly, childish, natural-born performer, diva)
Career: Spa Specialist
LTW: Super Popular

Laurel
Traits: easily impressed, excitable, party animal, flirty, commitment issues
Career: Spa Receptionist
LTW: Heartbreaker

Rowan
Traits: good, friendly, good sense of humour, charismatic, workaholic
Career: Politics
LTW: Leader of the Free World

Holly (heir)
Traits: couch potato, virtuoso, insane, kleptomaniac, nurturing
Career: Daycare
LTW: Golden Tongue, Golden Fingers
Building/property: Grocery Grab Supermarket
Unique rewards: Super Nanny, teleporter

Sequoia
Traits: absent-minded, friendly, dog person, clumsy, never nude
Career: Mausoleum clerk
LTW: The Canine Companion

Farthing and Pogles
Maxed hunting skill


Remember this?

“I really wish I could live in a house like that.”

She’s come very close to her childhood dream.

[RainBeau]

Oh I love the gingerbread house! I wonder which of the eight Holly will pick? I enjoy her clothes very much.

[hazelnut]

Thank you.  This will probably be the only time I regret not having Sweet Treats .  I have to admit that a large part of the reason for the infrequent updates recently is not being sure how to build it (well, that and the Ghosts).  I'm not one of those people who plays Sims for the house-building - it's more of an occasional enthusiasm.  Ever since I spotted Holly watching that TV programme, I've thought that I ought to have a go at a gingerbread house some time (although Sequoia was still my favourite for heir at that point).  Trying to fit everything in while retaining the 'gingerbreadiness' was the real problem - all of my designs came out too big.  In the end I went for an open-plan kitchen/living area in the house itself, with everything else in a basement.

I'm getting Seasons for Christmas and it struck me that Holly was the perfect Sim to test it out - and, if ever a house cried out for snow, it's this one .

Holly's fun to dress.  The original Holly was quite Christmassy but I'm going a lot madder with this one.  Well, she is insane, after all.

[RainBeau]

Oh indeed, the snow would be just like so much icing. It's a shame you don't have sweet treats though :/

[Roxanne07]

Great updates, hazelnut! I love the gingerbread house, too! And I love Holly! So, Holly and the gingerbread house? This couldn't get any better! 

[hazelnut]

Great updates, hazelnut! I love the gingerbread house, too! And I love Holly! So, Holly and the gingerbread house? This couldn't get any better! 

Thanks.  I'm looking forward to the next generation.  It will be a small household and an easy skill, so I can really have fun with the new features from Seasons.