Chapter 12 | Chapter 14

The next day dawned behind a haze of clouds, for which I was incredibly grateful. I woke groggily and stumbled out of the tent to find Mariko eating some cereal on my … oops.. our… cooler. She smiled broadly at me, and quipped “Good Afternoon, sleepyhead.”

“It’s afternoon?” I asked, confused, and wandered over to my diminishing stash of plasma packs. I didn’t want to go find “breakfast” in the town square, and I wasn’t about to ask Mariko… that’s not why I married her, and it seemed extremely presumptuous of me to assume she would be okay with being “breakfast”.

By the time we were done with breakfast, rain had moved in to go with the clouds, and Mari pulled out an umbrella wryly, and made a quick call to Windenburg’s Camping Supply store, and ordered a delivery of new chairs so we could sit by the fire again.

Chapter 3.10 | Rules for this challenge | Chapter 3.12

Generation Three: Red

Appearance: Red hair, scandalous clothing style
Traits: Romantic, Hot-headed, Art Lover
Aspiration: Serial Romantic
Occupation: Art Critic
House Goal: 30,000 worth

First Steps

I tried very hard to make our life all about the new baby, and to that end, I even arranged a date night for New Year’s Eve. We went out to Sulani’s only restaurant, and Mom came over to watch the kids. We had a lovely meal, and I even got to surprise Kado with a kiss under the Mistletoe they still had up in the lobby.

Chapter 11 | Chapter 13

The evening “dawned” slowly, with as keyed up as I was for tonight… and I woke up, took my shower, took care of my garden, and prepared for my “day” as best as I could.

Sighing, I found a human wandering around the town square looking very lost, and… steeling myself, I tried hypnotizing him as my blood told me how to do. It worked, and he grinned up at me emptily… so I leaned in, and took a bit of his plasma. It tasted a good bit better than the plasma packs – which, of course I had run out of…. but I didn’t like the guilty feeling I got afterwards, since he hadn’t been willing before I hypnotized him, only after. He walked away muzzily (I hadn’t drank enough to make him tired)… and I frowned to myself for a moment, watching him drift away. I hadn’t even asked his name! How rude of me…

Chapter 3.9 | Rules for this challenge | Chapter 3.11

Generation Three: Red

Appearance: Red hair, scandalous clothing style
Traits: Romantic, Hot-headed, Art Lover
Aspiration: Serial Romantic
Occupation: Art Critic
House Goal: 30,000 worth

A Chris for Christmas

We quickly settled into a new daily routine, this little family of mine. Charlie excelled at both school and scouts, and seemed to be the most at home when making friends and being as active as possible. I wondered what that would mean for her future.

Kado helped out around the house as much (or more?) than he ever had, which gave me the freedom to work on my art more. I quickly started to understand the value of having a real partner in life, and Kado went from being just a valuable helper to being completely irreplaceable.

Chapter 3.8 | Rules for this challenge | Chapter 3.10

Generation Three: Red

Appearance: Red hair, scandalous clothing style
Traits: Romantic, Hot-headed, Art Lover
Aspiration: Serial Romantic
Occupation: Art Critic
House Goal: 30,000 worth

All The Tomorrows

The next week passed by in a miserable blur. Kado never did come back. I picked myself up by my bootstraps, as they say, and decided I’d better start actually looking for a real partner. Charlie, however, was taking it the hardest. I finally had to sit down and explain that Kado has other kids, and a wife.. a real family, and that was probably where he had gone. She cried herself to sleep in my bed that night, and I felt even worse for having told her the truth. Perhaps I shouldn’t have?? …. But I’d sworn I’d raise her right, and lying to her had just seemed.. worse than breaking her heart, somehow.

Chapter 3.7 | Rules for this challenge | Chapter 3.9

Generation Three: Red

Appearance: Red hair, scandalous clothing style
Traits: Romantic, Hot-headed, Art Lover
Aspiration: Serial Romantic
Occupation: Art Critic
House Goal: 30,000 worth

Growing Up

I finally got around to buying a television. Granted, it was because work was requiring me to watch some for research, but still, I bought a TV.

Work seems to take up so much of my time. I try to do as much from home as possible, but trips to the city on the bus were time-consuming and necessary. I hated leaving poor Charlie in daycare, but progressing in my career was definitely a priority for me. Things were going really well on that front, at least. Promotions were coming regularly, and so were the raises – which really helped, because I knew I was going to need to upgrade the house eventually. Charlie wasn’t going to remain tiny forever.

One last thing to do before I actually start writing: introduce you to the families and lots I added to my game for this save. (Also, make sure you check the Challenge Home Page link below if you’re interested in game details like the ageing scheme I’m using.) All of the below lots and families are pulled off the gallery by searching hashtags, and I’m including item names and EA ids of each piece, so if you are interested in them, you can grab them, too.

The first thing I want to do before I start writing this new challenge is introduce you to the family and their house. Both are on the gallery, if you’re interested in downloading them. In fact, there’s also a smaller version of the cabin uploaded earlier, because I had to add room for their toddlers.

“Do I need a new challenge? No. Should I start a new challenge? No. But I want to get back to blogging in the worst way, and I’m afraid to jump back into existing stories until I get the hang of writing again… At least, that’s what I keep telling myself. I’ve started this particular challenge before, and didn’t get very far… so it deserves another look. Then I have this young family from yet another challenge that didn’t get very far (because I mis-read the rules and missed something rather massive)… and I am absolutely in love with them. So I figured, why not restart the Simerican Settlers Challenge… and bend the rules just far enough to allow me to start with an existing family instead of just the one founder.”

So, that’s the plan. I can’t promise that I will be updating this regularly, nor can I guesstimate how long I’ll play it before feeling confident enough to pick up my old stories where I left off… so don’t ask. I just don’t know.

Now, on to the challenge. The challenge I picked for the young McPherson family is the “Simerican Settlers” Challenge. It’s not one I wrote, nor have I done any updating to it…. so some changes may have to be made along the line, as I am approaching this mostly from a story standpoint.

“The Knitting Pack is coming out… and I’m so excited. It seems the perfect time to start a Decades Challenge. My problem was – I couldn’t figure out how to play it. There were too many options. And I simply couldn’t decide. So, here’s my solution. I will be starting TWO Decades Challenges, with very different options and blogging styles. If at any time I’m not having fun with either (or I find my setup isn’t working well), I hold the right to discontinue one or the other and just stick with one challenge from then on.”

At least that was the original plan. Then the Tangles’ story took on a life of its own, and even pulled in some of the other Decades story members across the save files (which you’ll see in the next chapters to be published). Both of these  challenges will be continuing as they are at this point. In fact, once my blog organization project of Dec. 2021 finishes, this story is top of my list to get back to work on!

In short: this is a traditional Decades Challenge, with time going past as the Sims age instead of by generation (like I’m doing with the other half of the Challenge War). I did modify the aging scheme, though. So instead of one year being 4 sims days, it’s 7 sim days, or one season. It’s easier for me to keep track of. It makes the play take much longer, but I like it because I have tons of time to get to know my sims.