Caribou

Round 26: Winter 2023

last update/next update

Caleb Moretti is 41, Cara is 34 and Anthony and Veronica are both 6.
(Filippo is 68, Nick is 20, Amelia is 34, Maia is 21)

Narrated by Cara Moretti

At the beginning of this year, I was finally able to get an internship at the hospital. I was so excited to finally be working in the field I actually studied for!

I'm working really closely with my brother-in-law, David and even more so now that I'm working daylight hours. He's been really helpful to me so far and he was even the one who recommended me.

We're feeling a little more financially secure now so we bought a car. We really splashed out, as you can see. It's a piece of crap, really but it runs and it makes it much more convenient for Caleb to get to work in Exeter.

I was having to work a lot of nights for a while there, which meant I slept all day leaving Anthony and Veronica to Caleb. It was nice to be able to rest but I really missed hanging out with the kids.

I don't think I could do nights any longer than I did. There's no sleeping once Veronica gets home from school!

I love being able to spend more time with the kids now. Even when Veronica flat out tells me I'm being boring. Veronica doesn't pull any punches.

She's not a musician - she's definitely an artist. I can barely draw a stick figure so she doesn't get it from me. Caleb drew comic books for several years though, so I guess she picked it up from her dad.

Anthony's more scientific but somewhere along the line, he's become incredibly interested in spacemen and aliens and that's just about all he talks about. Maybe he's a future astronaut?

Both of the kids are very outgoing and we are overrun with kids every afternoon after school. They're usually cousins, like Noah and Adelaide, but that's hardly surprising. Anthony and Veronica have a lot of cousins!

We then have to feed all these kids, but Caleb usually has plenty of things in the fridge that are easy to heat up.
We'd both love to take a vacation but right now, we're just dreaming. There are a lot of other things we need to have money for before we think about overseas trips.

It is nice to fantasise though! I'm not really that interested in going to Cape Elizabeth, seeing I grew up there but Three Lakes, or Takemizu maybe? They both sound like amazing places.

Some people have all the luck. My friend Rose is getting married in a few months and her future in-laws are paying for her and Joanna to go on a honeymoon. I was so jealous when she told me! Rose is a little uncomfortable with the idea but they were apparently quite insistent. I think I'd forget all about any awkwardness once I was relaxing in a fancy hotel!

Maybe paying for a holiday eventually will be made easier now that we've decided not to have any more kids. Caleb would like another but he's feeling like our family might be complete the way it is. I definitely feel that way, so I'm glad he's coming around too.

I can tell he still misses having little ones around the house though, from the way he looks at his nieces and nephews. But we can't keep pumping out babies just so we always have toddlers on hand. I'd need a more compelling reason to have another.

Toddlers are adorable but so demanding. Especially when you have twins!

Amelia is Caleb's boss at work now, a fact which she loves teasing him about. She gets no small amount of glee from bringing home a bigger paycheck than her older brother and being able to give him orders at work.

Caleb's not really bothered. If he was a sous chef the rest of his life, he'd be okay with that. Money isn't everything to him.

He does love his job though. His cousin Jacob just graduated from university and has been working a fast food job, just to pay the bills.

Caleb's been trying to convince him to use it to get his foot through the door of the restaurant industry but I don't think Jacob knows what he wants. I guess he'll figure it out. He's only 22. Caleb was almost 40 before he figured out what he wanted to do with his life!

Nick is about halfway through his junior year and he came home for a visit this week.

He wanted his girlfriend Maia to meet his grandpa.

Filippo is such a great grandfather. I don't know how he keeps up with all of the grandkids but he does. He's so involved and he even babysits sometimes. I'm glad Anthony and Veronica's only remaining grandparent is such a doting one.

Nick, Maia and Filippo arrived shortly before the kids got home from school and there was practically a tug of war over whose room he was going to check out first. Anthony's ant farm won out.

And then Veronica had to show Filippo her current work in progress.

Caleb stayed downstairs with Nick and Maia, where he found out that Maia's graduation has been delayed, due to her being placed on academic probation. Caleb wasn't really surprised. When she and Nick first started going out, Caleb told me she was a nice girl but a little flakey.

I didn't get to meet her until I got home from work at 6 and we all sat down to dinner but I have to agree. She is a really sweet girl.

One thing I really liked about her is the way she seemed genuinely interested in what Anthony and Veronica were talking about.

Other people's kids are not always very interesting, especially when you don't have kids yourself, but Maia was great with the twins. I think they liked her too.

But of course, they know Nick likes her so they would!

Both the twins pretty much take Nick's word as gospel. They really love their big brother.

I bet they'd behave if we had Nick watching them after school. Our poor nanny is having some trouble with them! She's told us that Veronica has a bit of a smart mouth, which sadly didn't surprise me.

She also told us that she sometimes hears them shrieking up in one of the bedrooms and then walks in to investigate, only to find them silent and looking very guilty.

The stray feathers on the floor make it obvious what they've been doing! I don't know what to do with them! They only ever really act up when they're with a babysitter. I think we need to pay this woman more for putting up with them!

Pic spam:

Oh, man, someone stop me from taking pictures of these two! I can't stop!

Notes:

• Title is from Caribou by Pixies.
• FYI, Cara is not in the med school program that I'm planning on putting Josie through. Just to make things easier for myself, only Sims who graduate from 2022 onwards (so Finn and co., plus anyone after them) will need to do the post-grad stuff.
• Lunar linked me to the invisible recolours of the dining booth ages ago and I've only just got around to trying them out. They are even more fabulous than I thought they'd be. When you recolour them, you can still see the outline on the floor, which makes them really easy to grab and put on the couch. Love it! Thanks again, Lunar!
• Cara and Caleb have about $7000 in their household funds. This is quite the achievement for them - they're doing better. Still not overseas holiday better but I've locked the want for both of them. Once they can afford it, they're going because they really deserve it! Then again, I want Caleb to buy a restaurant eventually and they should really be saving money for Anthony and Veronica to go to college too. Decisions, decisions! But it's fun. I like it when my families can't afford everything they want to do as soon as they want to do it.
• Filippo dropped by autonomously. I told you he was a good grandpa!
• Anthony and Veronica, despite giving the nanny a lot of trouble, are amazingly good students! I usually force my kids to do their homework because I'm worried about them getting taken away if they start failing, but I've been leaving it until they roll the want lately and Anthony and Veronica roll the want every single time. Sometimes it's not until morning but they always make sure their homework is done! It must be their genius older brother's influence!