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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My poor Sims. You’d think by now I’d be better at micromanaging their lives, avoiding snarls and keeping them in platinum so they can be as happy as possible, but I still have a tough time of it. In fact, it’s often supremely frustrating. But I keep playing in hopes that one of these generations, I will finally get it all RIGHT. Unfortunately it won’t be third generation. Yes, that’s right — another elder died in GOLD last night, so I missed out on my platinum headstone. I’m sad that he’s gone, but strangely more disappointed that I didn’t get that lovely marble marker, because he and I worked so hard for it! Ah well.

Here’s what happened…

Devin Shanley, my third generation Legacy heir, was due to pass away in two days. As a Popularity Sim, all of his wants involved making best friends with his kids and grandkids. Unfortunately most of his kids live at Uncle Liam’s, so that makes things a little tougher. He wanted to best friends with his son Aidan and his grandson Patrick — Patrick lives with him, Aidan doesn’t — so I invited Aidan over and had him interact with his dad for many hours. Well, those Best Friend relationships take a mightly long time to develop. After two dozen interactions including chatting, tickling, joking, and hugging, their Lifetime Relationship score had gone up by maybe five points. The same thing happened when I tried to get Devin and Patrick to become best friends. It was simply taking too long.

I was hoping Devin would get more wants to flirt and woohoo with his wife, but he seemed more interested in making all those friends. He did get the occasional Flirt with Kaylynn interaction, but when I’d fulfill it, instead of another interact-with-Kaylynn want spinning up, I’d get one of those “Be Best Friends with so-n-so” wants. D’oh! I’m really glad now I didn’t try to go for his Impossible Want (Make 30 Best Friends) because that would have gotten old real quick.

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I didn’t get a chance to play any Sims tonight, but I couldn’t go without posting on the last day of the year, so I combed through my Legacy Challenge family pictures and decided to share a bunch that never made it into my updates. It was fun to look through the old pics of the Shanley family in their little house and see how far they’ve come in just a few generations.

I have to say that the snapshots are a bit random — there’s a good reason why some of them never made it into my updates! I hope you will enjoy them anyway.

Here’s Sheldon, way back in 1st Generation, about to set his Baked Alaska on fire. Sheldon was the mailman until he married my Legacy founder, Nia Shanley. Eventually he became the mayor of Mt. Geneva.

Sheldon and Nia gave birth to a set of lovely twins, Kiara and Bree — though they didn’t look much alike…

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Short update tonight as it’s way past my bedtime…I’ve been having fun visiting all of the new blogs that are popping up! I’ve linked to a bunch of new ones in my sidebar, so make sure you check them out.

Now for the update…I played my Legacy Challenge family for a few hours tonight, but didn’t take many pictures, mostly because it was mass chaos. Also, my lot slowed way down for a bit until I deleted about 30 light fixtures and got rid of some excess landscaping. I really need to save up for a new graphics card or some more RAM or something! I’m not sure which would be better.

Amid the chaos, I did make some progress. I wanted Taryn to fulfill her “Max All Skills” want, so she had this routine: use the energizer to max her needs, don the thinking cap, study until she maxed a skill (putting her in platinum), then hop into the energizer again. Sometimes she’d take a break from studying to make Smart Milk for Callum (since everyone else was in green or worse). Eventually she maxed all of her skills, huzzah! I didn’t take a picture of it, though. Instead I took random pictures like this one…

…in which Devin and a visitor — his brother Liam — play the punching game. I can just hear Devin saying, “You call that a punch, old man? Come on, do your worst! I can take it, I’m a SUPERHERO!” Patrick seems pretty impressed with him, anyway. Zuzu is on the couch in her PJs talking to yet another member of the Stafford family, little Tina. The Staffords are showing up everywhere lately! Maybe it’s because I finally bought them a phone.

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Things keep chugging along in my Legacy Challenge family…

Kaylynn has been going to work off and on, so she finally got promoted to Astronaut. Unfortunately the very next day I made a bad chance card choice (will I ever learn?) and she lost her job. I’m not sure if I’ll have her get another job or let her spend her remaining 10 days at home with her grandkids.

Devin finally made it to Captain Hero, the top of the Law Enforcement career. His carpool is extremely cool, and I took a picture of it, but I don’t want to spoil it for those who haven’t had a Captain Hero Sim yet. If you’ve already seen it or you don’t mind being spoiled, you can click here to see Devin leaving for work.

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Well, despite the holiday frenzy of the past few days, I managed to squeeze in some quality time with my Legacy Challenge family (and the offshoot, Uncle Liam’s House). The Shanley holiday party and the family portrait were great fun, but I needed to get going on that fifth generation!

First I wanted to have Robi and Fiona get married. Marriage isn’t necessary for the Legacy Challenge, but it has been a Shanley family tradition so far, and I have that nice chapel, so why not? We needed to do some spring cleaning, though — I had everyone stay home from work that day and tidy up the house and yard. Devin trimmed the hedges outside the family chapel while the gardener pulled weeds.

Fiona’s energy was low, so I had her go to sleep while Robi made himself lunch…

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Here’s the latest Shanley family portrait:

Kaylynn and Devin are standing behind their two daughters, Taryn (left) and Fiona (right). Fiona, a Family Sim, is my current Legacy heir. I left her fiancé Robi out of the picture because I couldn’t fit him in properly, and he’s not officially part of the family yet anyway.

I really wish we had some kind of in-game camera object that would arrange the family in a decent pose, have them all smile, and snap the picture. As it is, getting the whole family to cooperate for a picture-taking session can be a bit of a challenge. At least no one is slouching horribly this time! And everyone is grown up, so no acne! I do have outtakes, though, if you want to see what my silly Sims were doing while I was waiting for a good photo op…

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