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…
…and even though his Cooking score is maxed-out, he managed to start a fire. Perhaps he was nervous about the impending nuptials.
Finally everything was clean and everyone was refreshed. Devin invited Uncle Liam and the kids over, so we had a little family reunion. The ceremony and subsequent reception were a rousing success, but I forgot to have anyone actually use the “Throw a Wedding Party” option, so no limousine showed up to whisk the newlyweds away on their honeymoon. At least, I’m guessing that’s why it didn’t appear.
Afterwards I had all of the family members socialize with each other. One of my own mini-goals for the Challenge is to keep the two households as closely connected as possible. When Maire and Aidan were adopted back into the family, they had low scores with everyone, so I’m trying to build them back up again. Here Taryn and Maire (with the braids) have a chat in the toddler suite. Maire is one of the kids living at Uncle Liam’s and has recently become a teenager (Knowledge, yay!).
Usually I wait until the newlyweds return from their honeymoon before I have them try for a baby, but since there was no limo this time, I just sent them right up after the wedding. It’s another Shanley family tradition! They didn’t seem to mind. It took two tries before I heard the little lullaby.
Taking after her mother, Fiona had a very easy pregnancy. Nothing like poor Nia, my Legacy founder, who was constantly throwing up in the bathroom. Fiona doesn’t have a job, so she didn’t get any maternity leave. Taryn took over Fiona’s Culinary career (gotta get that candy-making machine!) and Robi is studying Cleaning so he can max all of his skills. (He’s also a General Practitioner in the Medical field.)
The day finally arrived…and Fiona had twins, a boy and a girl! I happened to be playing early on Christmas morning when that happened, so they were like a little Christmas present. The great thing is that they have broken the line of scary Shanley clone children — they have grey eyes instead of brown, and the little girl has blonde hair, like her dad. They also share their dad’s golden brown skin tone. I named them Patrick and Zuzu.
Another great thing is that they have slightly different personalities. They are both fairly Neat, very Outgoing, somewhat Active, and somewhat Nice, but they differ in their Playfulness scores — Patrick is very Playful, while Zuzu is only moderately so. Twins are definitely a handful, but I’m getting better at taking care of Sim kids (aside from that whole social worker thing), and the rest of the family members pitch in, so it’s not so bad.
All of the ghosts decided to haunt the night the twins were born — I guess they were checking out the fifth generation? Here’s their great grandpa Leo floating through the toddler suite.
Well, after that momentous event at the main house, I decided to see how things were going over at Uncle Liam’s for a bit… (continued on page 2)
I was just wondering how you are able to let teens grow up? Is she part of a household? I’m not playing my spin-off houses legacy-style either, just to be able to have a nice story going. I am however, rather jealous of your website. Well, extremely jealous, it’s absolutely goregeous. Keep up the great work!!
Yay! You finally updated. It was definitely worth the wait Jen! How was your Christmas? I’m sure it was fantastic. Can’t wait for the next update!
It seems like everyone is getting twins besides me. Anyways, good luck taking care of them ^___^ I can’t wait until they grow up. I wanna see how much they resemble each other…
Can’t wait until next update!
Yannick – Hi and thanks for the compliment on my website! I can’t take all of the credit, though — I am hugely indebted to Lynda, Kara, Kathy, and Lani for being my inspiration when I first started this blog. Just had to say that. As for your question, you are right, I have Kelly in a household, so I will be able to grow her into an adult and have her marry Rian someday if I decide to. Woo!
Jessica – My Christmas was exhausting but fun. How was yours? :-)
Leslie – I didn’t get any twins until I started my Legacy family – have you tried marrying your Sims off to service NPCs? :-D I also do the thing where my pregnant Sims eat nothing but cookies before they start to show, but that’s an unproven method.
I have another question, do you have to pay for the blog thing. After reading your blogs, I wanna start one of my own but how much does it cost?
Hi Jen, loved the update on your Legacy Family! I have a question also for you concerning WordPress: Do you use FTP to upload all your pictures? I have SmartFTP, but I have yet to figure out how to use it. Thanks.
I love the face of Robi, he looks like a very patience guy with no worries.
Twins are great, specially when you are getting the milk for one, while u getting the second bottle , the other tries to take it from the one drinking and they began to fight for the milk. btw everytime i read about twins is a boy and a girl, i haven’t read about 2 girls or 2 boys, is that possible? anyway excellent work with your legacy family.
Welcome back Jen! I checked back a couple of tiems during christmas to see if you might just so happen update eventhough you already posted that you won’t :) Well I hope you had a good christmas! anyway, looks like thigns are going great in both Uncle Liam’s and the main house :) I think the kids will start to get more unique rather than replicas of each other sicne there’s a bigger gene pool to create kids from. So i really can’t wait to get to generation 5 or 6 to see how kids turn out :) who did you twins get the grey eyes from? is it from their dad?
and I just have to say , Rian making a wish is such a cute pic :)
If you don’t mind me answering lorna’s question. It is as possible to have girl/girl or boy/boy twins as it is to have girl/boy. Cause I too had my first set of twins in my legacy family and twice in a row! When legacy founder had a set of girl/boy twins then a set of boy/boy twins. boy were they a handful! bathing, feeding, teaching to walk/talk etc. on top of the hugging/snuggling/playing! but it really taught to me manage sim kids so much better that now it’s hardly a problem.
I think I’ve lost track of some of your family history, is your legacy family in it’s 4 or 5 generation now with the twins?
btw… I think I might start a sim blog of my own after reading so many good blogs out there, especially yours Jen! and also Kathy’s great hacks updates on her blog and Kara’s interestign stories!
Leslie – I use WordPress, which is free, to maintain the blog, but it doesn’t have its own hosting service like Blogger or TypePad, so my site is hosted by A Small Orange. I currently pay $5.00 a month for 400MB of space and 10GB of bandwidth, plus I paid them $10 (a yearly fee) for my own domain name. ASO has worked great for me so far, but due to an internal re-org they aren’t taking new orders at the moment. It looks like they’ll be open for business again in sometime in January.
Kristina – I don’t use FTP to upload my pics — I use the File Manager in cPanel, which was provided by my hosting service. As for SmartFTP, I’ve never used it, but it looks like they have some tutorials on their website — have you tried those? They also have a forum where people might be able to help.
These questions remind me that I should probably create an “About” page for my site that includes some of the above information. I think I’ll work on that… :)
Hi Janice — I really hope you do start up a Sims blog — I would love to read it! :-D
I’m in my fifth generation now with the twins, and it’s going pretty well…but now the house is full again! No more kids until the elders pass away.
Thanks for answering my question, Jen. I’m thinking about starting my own Sim blog site. Thanks for the info.
I recently started doing the Legacy challenge and I uploaded it in the Sims 2 Website. It would be awesome if you guys checked it out and tell me what you think. It’s my URL.
Jen, good job with the site and keep up the great work!
Merry Christmas and Happy New Years, Jan. I loved the update. You are so full of helpful info. If you do get a page about your website it would be great. I am getting my old computer out and cleaning up the hard drive and getting more memory so I can play my Sim2 and start my own blog. Any helpful info to us “first timers” would be great and I truely love you blog so much that I hope when I get my own i’m as creative as you are with yours. I hope my computer is not too old to hold the Sims game. Wish me luck. Keep up the great work.
Also have you had any redheads generation yet? I thought one of your sims was a redhead?
Can’t wait for you next update!
Leslie – COOL! I signed your guestbook. ;-)
Mary – I hope you had a Happy Christmas, too! And I hope your computer will run the Sims for you. I would love it if you did a blog — it’s great to have more Sims stories to read. And no redheads yet, unfortunately! You’re right, my Legacy founder was a redhead, but none of her descendents have been born with red hair.
I’ve been fortunate enough to get all the hair colors and eye colors in my Legacy. It took a lot of births, but I just managed to complete my Legacy. I think I am going to do another one, and this one would go in my blog, once I finish it. Hopefully that will be today.
Hi Jen! I was swamped at work yesterday so I totally forgot to check and see what you’ve been up to. I’ve been a downloading fool so I haven’t been keeping up with my families, but I still scour for hacks and post about them frequently.
Wow, first set of twins in the Shanley household! Congrats!!! The house is bursting at the seams once again!
I have some big changes in mind for the new year. I hope to be more active in The Sims 2 world.
Hi Jen
Glad you’re back and that you had a nice holiday. Great update and congrats on the twins. It’s amazing how caught you can get in reading these Sims blogs. I just returned from spending the holiday with my family and I’m already making the rounds and reading my favorite blogs. :-)
My Christmas was great! Thanks for asking!
I’ve been thinking about uploading my Legacy Challenge onto TheSims2.com, but the thing is, I’m already on my third generation on my current challenge. If I posted this one, it would be really confusing and I haven’t taken any pictures at all. So, I don’t know what I should do? Start a new challenge? It sounds so horrible, but I really would like to have my own little blog-type thing. Oh well. What do you think? Merry Late Christmas!
Jessica – I don’t think it would be confusing at all if you started your blog at 3rd generation of your Legacy family. You could post a family tree and maybe do a background post to get everyone up to speed. I would love to read it whatever you decide to do!
I just started reading this story tonight and I absolutely LOVE it! It’s a pretty quick read; I like that. It’s nice to read a story without an extraneous storyline to it. “Just the basics”, ah, that’s refreshing!
Anyway I wanted to comment on this particular entry because you made a sim named Kelly Stafford. I found it funny, because I know a Kelly Stafford who lives down the street from me! How cute.
I look forward to reading the rest of your stories! :D
Marie – Hello and welcome! Thanks for your comment, and I’m glad you’re enjoying my stories. How funny that you know a Kelly Stafford! :-)