Thursday 19 December 2013

Better to be


Round 34: December 2040 (Summer)

Tate Benton is 70 and Zelda is 65.
(Josie is 38, Charlie and Jack are 28, Camilla is 27, Grace and Everett are 10, Jude is 8 and Andrew is 4.) 

Narrated by Tate Benton

For the first year in a long time, Zelda and I won’t be hosting Christmas at our house. Camilla and Charlie have a house suitable for entertaining now, so they’re going to do it this year.


I was a bit disappointed that they wanted to take it on, as I really enjoying hosting Christmas. All the cooking that so many see as a chore is something I love to do.

But now, I think it’ll work out well. Charlie and Camilla want me to bring a dish, so I’ll still get to cook.

And Zelda will just get to enjoy herself, without rushing around cleaning up or serving everyone else. She loves having the family over but it is a lot of work.

I don’t think Grace and Everett care much where Christmas is, as long as it happens. They’re both very excited.

It’s only a few weeks away and they have both put in their requests for gifts. We appreciate having wishlists for the grandkids, especially now that Grace and Everett are so big. It’s so hard to know what to buy them at this age.

This year though, I think time might be a bigger problem. We’re trying to get gift shopping out of the way but there don’t seem to be enough hours in the day!

Zelda has been taking on most of the Christmas shopping and she recently had a very eventful trip to the mall with Jude and Andrew.

Josie was supposed to be on kid duty that day but she’d been called into the hospital to replace another of the GPs instead. Troy was working, so the job fell to Zelda.

Jude was fine. He was quite content to follow Zelda around and if she asked him to do something, he did it. 

Jude just looked at the guinea pigs in the pet store…

…Andrew had to pull them right out and play with them. 

Jude sat down with Zelda when she needed a break…

…while Andrew decided to bang away at the piano the shopping centre has set up for performances.

We joke that he’s just like Josie was when she was a kid but he’s not quite the same.

Josie was always a bit sneaky when she was naughty. Andrew is too impulsive to be able to be sneaky. 

It’s like he just can’t help himself. He said as much to Zelda when they sat down for some lunch. 

Zelda had fun with the boys but she was definitely exhausted when she got home. 

I was still a bit jealous that Zelda had a day out with the boys while I was flat out at work. 

I’ve had the restaurant closed for a couple of months for refurbishment and we’ve just this week reopened. No major changes but many were necessary, so we spruced up the place a little bit while we were at it. 

You do tend to lose a bit of your customer base when you close for an extended period, so I’m busy trying to build that back up now. 

We serve good food and we have an excellent reputation from before, so I’m confident it will happen. It’s just a matter of getting the word out that we’re open for business again.

And training up the new waitress, Celeste. We lost our waitress when we closed, so Celeste replaced her. 

She’s a hard worker and personally, I like her a lot. 

I can’t deny that she needs a bit of work in the customer service area though. She can come off as a little strange. 

Other times, she appears a bit bored and some enthusiasm wouldn't go astray.

She’ll get there. She’s just inexperienced right now.

I wasn’t sure Jack would ever be truly enthusiastic about taking over the restaurant one day but now that he’s used to the idea, I think he is. I mean, he’s not going to go off to culinary school any time soon but he seems to like the idea of being the owner now. 

Jack actually wants to start helping me already. He has some marketing ideas, which is something I’ve never really done much of. It’s such a relief to know Jack will take such good care of this place when I’m ready to hand over the reins. 

Notes:
  • Title is from Better to Be by Liam Finn.
  • One more update and then it's the end of the round! The final update will be with the Notts. That will be the actual Christmas update, rather than just the lead-up. I was hoping to get that one out by Christmas Day but it's looking like it might not be until a little bit before New Year's. That will be my goal - more realistic!
  • You may or may not have noticed the household profile link at the top of the page. This is an awesome idea that I stole (with permission) from Maisie. I've been toying with doing something similar for years but could never figure out a format I was happy with. Tate and Zelda are the only household with a profile at the moment but I hope to have one for everyone eventually. I won't be adding them to old posts, because I mean them to be a way for people who just want to jump in and start reading, rather than going back and reading everything. They should come in handy for anyone who finds themselves forgetting major details of other people's sim families too! Tate and Zelda's is not incredibly detailed, as I wrote it mostly from memory but I plan to go back through their updates and make sure I haven't missed anything big. ;) Thanks again to Maisie for the idea.
  • Zelda sold two novels this round and she's back to crappy royalties. I really want to see how big a cheque I can get but I don't know how much bigger the cheques are going to be while Zelda's still alive. She has plenty of years ahead of her but maybe I should set my sights on Xavier or Sylvia, two possible future writers, as well. 
  • Tate's restaurant is the same building as before (it's from TSR and I have the link on Pinterest) but slightly different decor. Sandy's Pizzeria set is perfect for it. 
  • Kids need more ways to misbehave in this game! Seriously, you can't even make them argue. It would be good if adults actually had a way to scold them too. There's the Lecture option but that isn't a selectable one and even with allmenus, I don't think you can use it for kids. :\ I probably just need some more pose boxes back but I'm still going slowly with my CC. 
  • I thought I took more pictures of Tate and Jack together. :( I was probably just pausing the game looking at how handsome Jack is and then not actually pressing PrintScreen, lol! Don't tell me you guys don't do that with some of your sims! ;) I was going to have Jack and Audrey come over for dinner and ended up cutting it out though, so here are some pics I took of that. 




       I love him. I cannot wait for him and Audrey to breed and pass those genes on!



18 comments:

  1. Another great update - and almost the end of this round, wow!! As usual, I so love the way you make the pictures fit the story, and glimpses of your houses, how you furnish and decorate them, are always interesting for me, even though I won't use any CC myself.
    Love the episode with the kids at the mall - I really must send more families to community lots and see what everyone gets up to!
    Off to check out Maisie's blog now.

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    1. Glad you enjoyed this one too. :) This house was decorated for a challenge, where we had to use a bunch of specific EA items (recolours were allowed), so I had to really think about where I was going to use some of the things. A couple were very far away from my usual style!

      Taking the kids to the mall was fun. I ty to get out to community lots at least once per session, or otherwise I feel like the session gets a bit samey for me! It keeps my sims amused, as well as myself!

      Thanks for reading and commenting!

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  2. Yea, I stare at Jack as well :) loved seeing them with their grandchildren. FYI, the profile link isn't working

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    1. LOL, I knew you'd be with me on the Jack thing! Thanks for letting me know about the link - it's fixed now. Not sure what I did wrong!

      Thanks for reading and commenting!

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  3. Making profiles for people to just jump in is rather genius, especially with your entire hood in generation 5! I'm only in round 5, so it's a good day or two of reading, and not the six weeks I spent catching up on yours, LOL
    I feel like you're going to end up with a lot of freckled sims. I see it on almost everyone in this family.
    Was your former waitress a townie? I thught it was one of your PNPCs. Or I might be thinking of another restaurant; I'm unfortunately the forgetful type.

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    1. I've wanted to do something like the profiles for a while but seeing Maisie's was the thing that finally showed me a good format for it. I do recognise how much content I have on here and I am always amazed when anyone reads back over ALL of it! I certainly don't begrudge anyone the right to just skip a whole bunch (as someone who is reading right now just did).

      Yeah, there are a lot of freckles. I don't know if I'll adjust the genetics somewhat or not. I really like freckles but there are turning out to be a TON of them, lol!

      You're probably thinking of Virginia, who is Matilda's stepmother. I think she used to work at Tate's but she quit in a huff one day and Adam ended up hiriing her at The Claudette instead, where Corbin also works as a host. You can see Tate's last waitress here. She's definitely just a townie. :)

      Thanks for reading and commenting!

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  4. Aww! I cannot wait for your actual Christmas update. They're always so great, with big family gatherings and whatnot. :)

    I forgot that kids can't argue in TS2! I think I remember so much, and then you mention something like that. Wow. Can kids really even do anything negative then?

    Heehee! Admiring Jack and forgetting to take screens, I've done that. Mostly I'm just marveling at "how well they turned out" or "holy crap, those two spawned THAT? Impressive!" Ahh, sims...

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    1. I'm pretty excited to play the Christmas update! I will probably throw up a lot tour before then though, as I've been doing so well getting out weekly updates and I won't make it this week!

      There's not really many negative interactions kids can do at all. There's "Torment" but that seems to only appear with siblings (or possibly just really high relationships). Other than that, you just have to hope they disagree with something the other is talking about or wait for that moment in Cops and Robbers where there's a head kick! It's kind of lame, I have to say. Kids fight all the damn time in RL!

      Glad I'm not alone! It's not even necessarily because of my sims all the time either. I'll just frame a shot I really like and sit around admiring it and then realise later I forgot to actually press PrintScreen! D'oh!

      Thanks for reading and commenting!

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  5. The household profile link is a nice idea. It's nice to be able to read back on the family's history.

    I loves Zelda's outing with her grandsons, and seeing how different Jude and Andrew's characters are! I'm sure both Tate and Zelda like the idea of their daughter having a kid that is as much a handfull as she was when she was younger!

    Tate's restaurant looks really nice (I saw the tour at N99). It's going to be nice for Tate and Jack to work together, it might make it easier on Tate to step back completely one day.

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    1. Ha, I don't know who is worse, Andrew or Josie! Josie was a brat in kind of a different way! At least Tate and Zelda get to give Andrew back - they were stuck with Josie, lol. ;)

      I'm really happy with the restaurant and it was nice to get one of my sims set up with their business again. I think he's the only one so far! I like the idea of Tate and Jack working together so much that I'm thinking of having Jack hire Tate as chef on a part-time basis. I could use that mod that lets you set the sim's hours and have Tate come in on the weekend or something. :)

      Thanks for reading and commenting!

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  6. Oh man, totally laughing at the picture of you pausing and drooling over hunky Jack. I can get on that train! Also very excited for them to breed, breed, breed!

    Loved the mall trip, it looks absolutely exhausting! It's like taking my sister's kids anywhere, but they truly misbehave. I agree there needs to be more options for kids to get into mischief. I'm excited for Jack to be taking over, Tate needs to retire or at least work part-time just for fun.

    Household profile looks great! Glad I could inspire! :)

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    1. LOL, well, Jack and Audrey are scheduled for June next year, so we'll have to keep our fingers crossed that they get down to babymaking. I imagine all I'll need to do is take them off BC, given their age and the fact they don't have any kids yet. I really want to see a baby from those two.

      I think Zelda deserves a medal for looking after Andrew all day, especially at her slightly advanced age. I have definitely taught kids who are more trouble than Andrew but as far as sim kids go, he's pretty bad, lol.

      Tate probably won't work full-time for too much longer. He's already 70, so he's definitely getting up there in years. I want him to have a little R&R.

      I'm having such fun with the household profiles. I'm already writing Caleb and Cara's for the first story update of next round and I haven't even put birthdays up yet!

      Thanks for reading and commenting!

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  7. Aww, I love the elder sims! Tate is obviously a hard worker. Still working at his age and owning and managing a restaurant.

    You always include so many sims in your updates, I guess the whole family, but it's really sweet to see that and read about them. :)

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    1. Tate and Zelda are a sweet couple, so I do enjoy playing them a lot. They are both very hard workers in their own ways - Zelda banged out 2.5 novels this round, which is not bad. ;)

      I do include lots of sims in my updates, by design! I have so many, so it's a good way to continue any story threads I might have going, without having to wait another two years to visit a certain family again. I'm glad you enjoy reading about them, in any case.

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  8. Yes, Jack should breed and soon! :) You always make the most of the OFB stuff in your hood, I feel very inspired to use it much more for my own game as well. Though I usually end up having a headache from all the managing my staff, LOL.

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    1. I think Jack will probably breed next round (or this round, as I've just started it). I have no self control, lol!

      I love OFB and have been missing a lot of my businesses since the rebuild. Confession though: I don't manage the staff! I use InSim to just refresh everyone's motives every now and then because a) I have a mod to remove plumbbobs, so I don't know they're unhappy until they're really unhappy and actually quit and b) I like to go down to my businesses for an absurdly long time, that no sim can possibly stay awake for!

      Thanks for reading and commenting!

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  9. LOL about staring at Jack and forgetting to take pictures...I think I do that quite a bit with some of my Sims. :)

    I can only imagine how tired poor Zelda was after a day with those two boys. One toddler wears me out, and I'm not an elder yet... It's great that Jack is showing such interest in the restaurant, and it will be interesting to see if he actually ends up as a cook or as something more of a general manager with a star chef on the staff. :)

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    1. Yeah, poor Zelda! She had two boys herself, obviously, but they were both pretty well-behaved. She's never dealt with an animal quite like Andrew before! He's proving to be a bit different to his mother.

      Oh, Jack most definitely won't be a chef! He's definitely a guy who is more interested in the behind-the-scenes/business side of things. I have some ideas for who I might hire after Tate retires as chef though and I'm quite excited about it. :)

      Thanks for reading and commenting!

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