After a few hours of playing my Legacy Challenge family, I’m only a tiny bit closer to that all-important 6th generation! Going for the “Have 10 Kids” want really set me back, because I can’t have Patrick, my 5th gen heir, get married until we move some people out of the house.

My plan is to move Owen (5G adult) out with Dubrey (5G teen), Heath (5G child) and possibly Kay (5G teen), but I want them to move into Uncle Liam’s (now Aunt Maire’s) so I can continue to play them (confused yet?). This means I have to build Owen’s relationship up with someone from Aunt Maire’s, and it is taking a long, long time.

“Are we buds yet? Come on! Do I have to bribe you or something?”

Since Owen was already acquainted with his uncle Aidan, I worked on building their relationship high enough that I can switch over to Aunt Maire’s and have Aidan ask Owen to move in. I got their Daily relationship score to 100, but their Lifetime score is hovering around the teens, which I don’t think will be enough. Maybe I’ll play Aunt Maire’s house tonight and try it out.

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Whew! Between last night and tonight, quite a bit has happened with my Legacy Family. Thank goodness, because I felt like I was stuck in a rut with the 4th and 5th generations. Out of curiosity, I glanced back through my pictures and noticed that Fiona was born around December 9th of last year — that means I’ve been playing her for over a month, and she’s not even an elder yet! Yipes. I have been sloooow.

Well, let’s get right to the update! As I mentioned in my last post, things have been rather crazy at Shanley Manor these days. Fiona has been making babies, and Robi keeps wanting to interact with his kids, including the ones that live over at Uncle Liam’s. For me the babies and toddlers haven’t been nearly as challenging as the children and teens, primarily because of the homework issue. I have to really keep an eye on everyone and make sure they do homework at least every couple of days, just so we can avoid a visit from the social worker. Apparently I’m running these kids ragged, because Dubrey came home from school one day and fell asleep on the sidewalk…standing up! Poor kid didn’t even have the energy to lie down. His mother was very concerned, of course.

In the background, Robi talks to his son Callum, who was visiting from Uncle Liam’s.

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After playing over at the Baby Factory (i.e. my main Legacy Challenge house), switching over to Uncle Liam’s house was a refreshing change of pace. It was still somewhat chaotic, what with four teens and a child running around, but since I’m trying to let them be semi-autonomous, I don’t have to micro-manage as much as I do at the other house. I barely even use the “pause” button! So it’s a bit more relaxing.

I hadn’t played Uncle Liam’s house since Kaylynn had passed away, so when I switched over, a bunch of the kids had inherited money, and the little gravestone spun above their heads. About §10,000 was added to the family funds, which I’m sure will come in handy. I haven’t decided what to do with it yet, though. Buy a proper hot tub? Buy a few more pianos (someone is ALWAYS playing piano in that house)? Or just save it and let Liam’s heir do some redecorating? We shall see.

In the above picture, Maire and Liam seem to be discussing the death of Kaylynn. Aidan is playing piano in the background.

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As we near the end of the fifth generation baby boom, I’m finding the Legacy Challenge to be just as challenging as ever. I blame it on this “Have 10 Kids” impossible want. It is driving me and the Shanleys insane. But we’re nearing the end, so things should calm down soon. At least, I hope so.

I’m still trying to keep the two families as connected as possible, plus Robi and Fiona often have wants involving the kids that are at Uncle Liam’s, so nearly every day they invite someone over. Usually it’s Callum. I had Robi invite him over one morning before school, so he was walking up the path just as his brother Owen was heading out to the bus. For some reason, it amused me to see them passing each other and waving hello.

Meanwhile Fiona the baby-making-machine was pregnant with child #6 while she taught little Kay how to talk. I’ve got this down to a pretty good routine — someone in platinum (usually Patrick — he’s been studying skills and seeing a lot of ghosts) makes the smart milk, then one of the parents teaches the kid until the bar is almost full. Whichever parent needs the aspiration points the most completes the training. It can be tricky to coordinate, but it’s the only way I’m keeping the parents in green or above, since almost all of their wants involve teaching their children.

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I didn’t have much time to play tonight, so I just popped into my Legacy Challenge house and took some pictures of it. That’s right, I bring to you the very first Grand Tour of Shanley Manor! (Well, I don’t know about grand, but at least it’s a tour…)

First off we have the requisite shot of the front exterior. I don’t see the front very often, because I’m usually playing from the side of the house with the walls partially down. Things were looking a bit shabby out here, so I weeded the flowerbed and placed some egg topiaries. It looks much better now.

The purple Japanese maple out front is the same one I “planted” back in Generation 2 — I just had to move it over a few squares. My Legacy tree still stands! You won’t see many other trees on the lot, however — I had to delete the jungle a long time ago because all of the foliage was really slowing things down.

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Since I started working on Fiona Shanley’s “Have 10 Kids” want, Mary has offered a name for the next girl, and nostalgia has proposed that I ask my readers to suggest more names for the last three babies. I figure I’ll need 3 boy names and 3 girl names. Here’s what you guys have offered so far (and I think they’re all very cool, by the way):

Boy Names
1. DUBREY (suggested by nostalgia)
2. HEATH (suggested by Heather)
3. open

Girl Names
1. VESTA (suggested by Mary)
2. TEBBANY (suggested by Dustyn)
3. HEATHER (suggested by Heather, hehe)

So I need one more boy name, in case I end up with three more boys! Any suggestions?

Hooray for long weekends! I was able to play my Legacy Challenge family for several hours last night (staying up entirely too late, as you can see from the timestamp on my last post), and now, since I have the day off, I’m able to post an update. It’s not as long as the last one, but is long-ish, so I hope that works. ;-) Also, you might want to check up on the latest family tree before reading this post, as it switches between households again, which can be a bit confusing, I realize. Anyway, enough of my babbling. On with the update!

As you may recall from a past update, one of the neighborhood headmasters developed a bug and wouldn’t admit the Shanley kids into private school. He couldn’t sit down to eat and ended up leaving because he was starved. When I tried to call him again, he would say, “Sure, I’ll be there at 5:00!”, then not show up. I tried that for a few days in a row and with other headmasters as well. I figured I’d just have to do without private school for the rest of the challenge.

Well, someone posted on the TS2 Legacy Yahoo! Group that they had a headmaster bug which seemed to “fix” itself after several days, so I decided to try again. I invited the headmaster over, and amazingly enough, he showed up! I had Patrick shmooze with him for a bit, which went incredibly well.

Now, I was a little skeptical, since this was the same headmaster that bugged out on me last time. He also showed up on the edge of my lot once and stood there for a couple of days, not moving. No one could interact with him, either, so I ended up using the Moveobjects cheat to delete him. I think the headmasters in general are extremely buggy.

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After futzing around in Paint Shop Pro (I am hopelessly clueless about that program), I finished up the latest family tree. It was taken from Fiona’s relationship panel, so it doesn’t have the Legacy founders, Nia and Sheldon, on it. Nor does it have Uncle Liam, but I wrote him in. I wouldn’t want him to feel left out, you know.

As you can see, Kaylynn has passed away. I’ll post a proper update on that sometime tomorrow. Fiona’s fifth child was born almost exactly the moment that Kaylynn left with the Reaper, so I just had to name the little one ‘Kay’, after her grandmother.

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