Charge

Round 35: February 2041 (Summer)

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Kirby 1 household profile

Trent Kirby is 71, Megan is 69, Jacob and Claudia are 40, Daphne is 10 and Iris is 7.

(Felix and Keira are 10)

Narrated by Jacob Kirby

At the back of my mind, I thought Claudia might be bored at home once both girls were in school but she keeps herself more than busy. On a farm, there’s always something to do. 

Trent and Megan are still fairly active, especially for their age, but Claudia has taken on the bulk of the work.

Of course, Claudia isn’t home as much anyway these days, with Kirby Market to run.

Trent still goes down with her sometimes, to help out with sales or stocking. 

I think he likes the opportunity to talk to the customers more than anything.

Claudia works the register, which she’s not the greatest at, by her own admission.

But Kirby Market won last year’s Best of the Best award, so she must be doing something right. The reviewer was very impressed.

Taking over the market was something Claudia really wanted to do but it doesn’t mean it’s been easy for her. She’s never had the experience of working outside the home and then coming home to two children and it’s been a bit of an adjustment for her.

So I decided to get her out of the house for a few date nights, just so she could recharge.

We’re both totally dedicated to Daphne and Iris but a little break is healthy for everyone.

The girls have a ball while we’re gone and Trent and Megan love it, so everyone wins. Megan always makes them all a special dessert, which is only an occasional treat for the girls.

They have also have campouts in the yard with Trent. It’s something he used to do with Declan and Caitlin when they were younger and now he does it with Daphne, Iris and Keira. 

I think a little time away from home now and then helped Claudia, as little a thing as it was. 

Claudia would start out a little wound up but we’d always be laughing by the end of it. 

Claudia is much less stressed now but we're still doing the date nights, just because we had so much fun with them.

To top it off, Trent and Megan always have the kids asleep by the time we get home, so there's never anything else to do but relax.

I work days currently, which is what lets me actually take my poor wife out to dinner now. It means an early morning but I’m often home even before Claudia is. 

It feels like I hardly see Claudia and the girls when I’m on night shift, so things are good right now.

It also keeps Megan happy. She never actually said anything while I was doing it but I get a strong impression she’s not thrilled that my job requires me to work at night sometimes. 

What can I do? Fires don’t wait for daylight, so there has to be someone ready at the station. 

Saturday is one of my days off, so we planned a little birthday party for Daphne that day. Well, it was meant to be little. It was going to be family only, since Daphne’s cousin Keira is her best friend anyway.

But then she begged to invite the rest of her grade, because she was worried they’d get their feelings hurt if they were left out. Seeing 10 is a milestone birthday, we agreed and she invited several other kids.

Then we were big softies and let Iris invite just one of her friends and it sort of just went from there. We ended up with a much bigger party than we were planning on.It could have been even bigger but we were missing Rebecca and Nathan, as well as Declan and Caitlin. 

It was hectic with that many kids running around but they all had a lot of fun too. 

Felix Lane has a bit of a reputation at school for being kind of a handful but he was on his best behaviour at the party.

Maybe the others were a good influence on him! He didn't act the way we expected at all, given the stories Daphne has shared from school. 

Megan made Daphne a chocolate cake, by special request of the birthday girl. 

I don’t think anyone was more enthusiastic about celebrating than Iris!

I was very keen to have kids close together in age and I’m glad we did it. The girls are like each other's biggest fans and they're very tight. 

Iris really looks up to Daphne and Daphne is an excellent big sister. 

I can’t believe she’s in the double digits now. I still remember the day she was born so clearly.

Daphne is in Grade 5 this year and Finn’s told us that she’s already doing really well. 

This is her second last year of primary school, so it's an important time for Daphne.

Iris is in my sister’s class for the second year in a row and we’re getting pretty good reviews on that front too. 

She’s polite, she doesn’t cause trouble and she’s just about the sweetest kid you could meet. That’s exactly what we see from her at home, so that wasn’t much of a surprise. 

However, it’s only been a week and a half and she already has a little homework backlog going. 

She’d just much rather play games on the computer than work on her spelling. 

We’re trying not to be too hard on her, because she’s still so young.

At the same time though, we’re not letting her get out of doing it either. Homework’s not going away any time soon, so we don’t want her to fall into bad habits with it.

She’s promised that she’s going to try her best and stay off the computer until her homework is finished from now on. Let's hope she can stick to it!

Notes:

• Title is from Charge by Splendid.
• It was also Trent's birthday this month but I am so terrible at doing birthday celebrations that I completely forgot to mention it! So happy birthday to Trent as well. ;)
• Iris tends to start her homework and then not finish it, because she runs out to hug Jacob when he gets home from work. There's a reason I gave her the Affectionate trait! So I'm going to have to watch her closely and make sure she gets it done. She rolls the want to do homework about half the time, so I think she's motivated enough. 
• Rebecca and Nathan are on their honeymoon, which you will see a little of in the next update. I'm sure I had a reason to schedule their update so close to their wedding but I have no clue what it was now. Oh well. That's who you'll see next, in any event!
• Claudia's aspiration was very low green for this entire session, which was what Jacob's date nights were an attempt to fix! Dates always get my sims into Gold or Platinum. People say Pleasure sims are easy to keep happy but with my experience with Claudia, I'd have to disagree. She rolls a lot of wants that give only 500 aspiration, so it takes a long time to get her mood up there. Give me a Knowledge sim any day - they're way easier to keep happy!