By that time my sister had gone, so I scrapped the adventuring (I’m doing enough of those with Felix) and sent Bob and Betty on a fishing expedition. Bob is an Angler, and as I mentioned before, Betty loves the outdoors, so they were happy as clams and spun up a jillion fishing wishes.
Since Betty got a head start on her fishing skill, she was already catching some impressive specimens.
Not so much for Bob. But he’ll catch up. And hey, he looks pretty snazzy in a suit. Go, Bob!
Who needs base camp? Bob and Betty had dried food, showers in a can, and their tent, so they just plopped themselves right down at an oasis and fished for the next two days straight.
Fishing for crocs! They caught some frogs, too. And about a metric ton of catfish.
Finally it was time to head back to their lives in Simsville. I’m playing with a bunch of different mods by Twallan, one of which is his Career Mod. This allowed me to register Bob as “Unemployed” at City Hall. For some reason, it’s a tradition for Bob to be jobless, and it makes sense with this particular Bob since he’s crazycakes. So it’s up to Betty to bring some cash into the household, although they’ll be fine for awhile since they had plenty of moolah left over after their Egypt trip and sold most of the fish they caught for a tidy profit.
Betty’s a Natural Cook and has a Lifetime Wish to be a Five-star Chef, so I got her a job at the diner. She worked about half a shift before leaving to go home because of her baby bump. Good thing they have that money cushion!
Well, they had a money cushion. With a baby on the way, they needed to expand their home, so I completely remodeled it (with apologies to Simbil, who did a fantastic job on making it look like the TS1 Newbie home). What can I say, I had a hankering to do a makeover. I kept the basic footprint but added a bedroom where the patio is and re-built all of the interior walls. They also got fresh coats of paint and new furniture. I went with a slightly rustic Arts & Crafts theme which I thought would suit their personalities.
The next day I had Betty announce her pregnancy to Bob. He was shocked and pleased (and standing in the shrubs for no good reason).
Betty’s Artistic and loves to paint. Whenever I leave her alone, she usually heads out to the easel outside.
This was kind of cool, just because I’m a dunce. I couldn’t tell what the heck Betty was painting — it just looked like a bunch of random blobs to me — but I thought it might look nice in the baby’s room, so when she was finished, I moved it there. I gave it the name “Anticipation” since I figure that’s the emotion Betty would be feeling the most during her pregnancy. (I had no idea how else to come up with an interesting name — totally forgot about Chann’s link to a painting name generator! — and “Random Blobs” is lame.)
After looking more closely at the painting, I perceived a distinct little girl shape (duhh, you might say. I really don’t know why I didn’t see it until then!). She had painted a little girl. And what was she wishing for in her panel? To have a girl. Anticipation, indeed. Now, I hadn’t necessarily planned on making them have Brandi (of Brandi Broke fame) but how could I not after that little bit of serendipity?
It was fate. So with the help of Twallan’s Super Computer, I made sure the gender of the child would be female. Betty’s wish was going to come true, by golly. I know I could have fed her watermelons or apples or whatever, but I couldn’t remember which was which, and I wanted to make sure this kid was a girl. You know how it goes. Even though Betty is a Sim, a collection of animations and routines and code, it’s what we bring to our Sims, our “humanifying” of them that makes them so fun to play and keeps us hooked on this blasted franchise. In the story in my head, Betty was telling me, “I want to have a daughter. I want to have Brandi.” How could I deny her that?
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What a fun looking hood! I’ve heard about Simsville but I’m yet to try it out but I might have to now. I’ve been playing a bunch of my own Sims in a hood I downloaded called Fort Sim.
I always liked the Newbies. I remember making over that little house so many times! I don’t know why I restarted the hood so often but I’d always make over that patio to be a second bedroom as well. I don’t think it was ever as nice as your makeover here though!
Ooh, Fort Sim! I’ve installed that one but haven’t checked it out yet. It looks epic, though. Ehaught is a fantastic builder. Thanks for the nice comments, Carla!
Um, Jen… that creepy kid is staring right at me… Still, she’s only creepy-looking. One of mine looked like he was a cross between Freddy Kruger and something that had been put through a meat grinder. Great update, though, and I love the term ‘crazycakes’! I may have to borrow that :)
LOL, Freddy Krueger? Oh dear…that’s bad. I honestly HATE the toddler/child years in TS3, which is why I tend to stop playing families once they have a kid at that age. :-p But I want to see Brandi grow up, so I’ll just bop around to other families while until she’s out of the creepy stages.
Yup, he looked more like Freddy than the Freddy skin that used to be available for sims 2. And, he just got worse as he got older. Or perhaps I’m being insulting to poor Freddy?
I never played the pre-mades much either, but this does look like so much fun!
Maybe it’s just me, but it sounds like “Bob and Betty Newbie taught me how to play The Sims” would be great on a shirt, lol.
And TS3 toddler and children are very creepy.
I know, I never thought I would have so much fun with the pre-mades. Maybe it’s because these versions aren’t Maxis/EA. :-) (Did I already say that in my post? I’m tired today. :-p LOL)
Totally agree on the high creepiness factor of the TS3 kids. I keep hoping for a family/kid-themed expansion and a total overhaul of their looks/animations. :-p
Tehehe jen, I love your commentary :D
I remember the newbies all to well. Yes they were the first family to introduce me into the world of the sims (darn bob and betty, they got me addicted!). I’ve got simsville but haven’t really explored it (just opened it up to see if it was worth keeping around, as I do for most hoods I download) but now I’m almost itching to snag those origional sims and go nuts. It’s funny though, I’m going to want to give everything a makeover right away. No offence to the wonderful creators at all, that’s just what I do with maxis/EA stuff, and I suppose it’s because that’s what they’re based on. I’m currently enjoying the Neverglade hood by Pyronium (well apart from building my school), I love creating cabins and the whole ‘mountain town’ theme. Thanks for those links too! Deleting that cache file does fix my edit-in-game issues, but I’m going to try your method of loading the hood with the actual game because I need my CC too :)
Haha, yes, I blame my whole Sims addiction on Bob and Betty…if they hadn’t taught me how to play, maybe I would have taken up gardening or something more productive instead! (Just kidding, I can’t keep a plant alive to save my soul!)
Wow, Neverglade looks amazing! There are just so many nice worlds popping up now, it’s hard to keep up with them all. I’ve never seen such nice mountains, though. I’ll definitely have to check that one out.
Excellent! I’m loving this! I have Twallan’s Story Progression (got tired of the error message that you get with Awesomemod). But alas … I haven’t played my game since installing it. I wanna get that super ‘puter, too. :) This neighborhood you mentioned sounds interesting. I may have to look into that.
I didn’t really play Bob and Betty much in Sims 1. I did boot them out of their house, though, and used their house for my sims. It was one of my first renovation projects, lol!
I hate Sims 3 pillbug babies so very much. And the ugly factor of the toddlers (Sims 2 toddlers looked so cute!) and even the kids. Which is pretty sad for me, since I’ve always loved Sim kids and have done about eleventy thousand “Have 10 Kid” wants in my playing through of Sims 2. I’m dying for them to add new things for kids/toddlers (and PETS, dangit!) but it looks like anything for them will be several months off, still. Ugh.
Nice revisit of Sims 1 sims, though! I’ll have to consider getting that neighborhood into my game.