Rotation 7: Winchester

I'm currently on rotation 8 in my game, so it seems like a good time to start posting rotation 7 before I start playing my 9th rotation, and forget what happened entirely. ;)

I loaded up the Winchester's apartment to find this delightful sight waiting for me.

I don't really know what to make of the rainbow poop, but the red nose was clearly a sign that Rocket needed to be taken to the vet once more, so off he and Alec went.

At the vet Alec gets cornered into a conversation by this townie, and looks hilariously upset by it.

I'd almost forgotten about his loner trait tat this point in the game; he mostly just hangs out with his family and Andy's family, so he rarely gets tense these days.

Back at home, the twins have safely returned from their little day trip to Sixam. I would like to note that I did actually have to go on a mission to rescue them - they were off lot when I loaded the apartment, and I wasn't able to send them home until I left the lot, and switched the control to them.

Kind of annoying, but at least it was easily fixed, and I didn't have to go on some crazy mission with Andy to get them back (as interesting as that would have been.)

Jeff and Alec sit the twins down to have a quick talk about space travel: don't do that.

Then they get up and leave to have some "dad bonding time" to celebrate how well they handled the space travel shenanigans.

In fact, they think they handled it so well that Jeff would actually like to have another baby, please. Jeff seems to be under the impression that if he can get pregnant once, he can definitely get pregnant again with his husband this time.

Jeff no. As tempting as it is to see how a biological Jeff/Alec baby would look, I really do not need to add any more kids to the neighbourhood!

And speaking of babies, it's time for the twins' birthday! Andy shows up uninvited to celebrate, which is excellent timing on her part.

Based on my gameplay so far, I feel like she has a sixth sense for knowing exactly when it would be a good time to drop by the apartment. She just always seems to show up when the boys have a free moment to hang out, or some sort of celebration is going on. Andy is truly the best neighbour.

Both twins grew up with the happy toddler trait, as I didn't manage to max out all their skills this time.

I went with Whiz Kid and perfectionist for Cas' aspiration and trait, so that he can be a mini-Alec.

For Polly, who got some celebratory confetti courtesy of Andy, I went with Rambunctious Scamp and active as her aspiration and trait. I really wanted to give her dance machine, but it's not available to kids for some reason.

As I mentioned in their last rotation, the childhood stage on aliens appears just fine, so I did not have to do any fancy tweaking with MCCC just yet. They do, however, seem to have a problem with their eyebrows changing colour sometimes, despite the fact that I've got them set to match their hair colour.

I'm not sure what's causing that, or how to fix it, but if you spot any wonky eyebrows just ignore them. ;) I'm hoping it'll just fix itself once their hit their teens, because I don't seem to have that problem with Andy.

I've been trying to spread out the after school activities so that all my kids this generation don't end up doing the same things, and I decided that Polly and Cas will be my guinea pigs for the scouting one.

They get a little secret handshake after they join, which is very cute.

I have not been screenshotting all of the little advice pop-ups, because they come up quite often and usually repeat, but I will post some of my favourite ones.

Like this one, where Polly wants to make sure she has the most balanced diet, so she asks Jeff if it's okay to eat dirt. She's such a mini-Jeff already. Jeff would probably eat dirt if he thought if he was good for his #gains, but I went with the first choice because that wasn't an option.

Alec also got a career pop-up this round, but I declined it because I didn't want him to be fired from his job before he even reached the highest level.

If they had a little more money, I might have considered letting him take the offer, and then using that opportunity to have him open his own restaurant as a business, but they're going to need a solid 100k before that can happen. 

I did manage to finish Alec's master chef aspiration this rotation, though; it was pretty easy because he'd already maxed out his cooking skill, and could already cook both gourmet and excellent quality meals.

His main challenges were really just to have a silver dinner party event, and to serve three gourmet meals at another event. I set up his first dinner party early on in the rotation, and invited Andy and Miko as their two guests.

The kids technically did not count towards the guest list, because I figured it'd be easier to complete the event goals if I just needed to focus on Andy and Miko, so they just kind of wandered around and helped themselves to food as their dads entertained.

Polly even helped by collecting all of the dirty dishes as they finished with them, which got her some nice scouting and manners points.

I think they ended up with a gold dinner party event, which earned them some furniture reward that I immediately sold for money. More importantly, it got Alec to his next milestone, which was what I really cared about.

I've never been super great at the party events in sims, aside from the Headmaster one in TS2, so it's nice to actually exceed the goal for once. I think the first party event I ever held with these four only ended up being a silver.

After the guests leave, Polly and Cas discover there is something living under one of their beds.

I usually only play one sim kid at a time, so I've only just discovered that if there's a monster under the bed, both children will wake up.

Luckily for the twins, they've got a vampire slaying dad they can wake up to take care of the monster.

Not as exciting as hunting vampires, but Alec takes care of the monster, and gets to add one more creature to the list of things he has successfully slayed.

After everyone gets some more sleep, Alec wakes up to make the children some gourmet lunch to take to school, while Polly gets down to the summer strut station, which is the only station I let my sims listen to.

I've never used the 'pack into lunch' option before, so I decided to see what happens when you send a sim off to school with one.

Jeff leaves for work around the same time that the kids leave for school, which leaves Alec home alone most of the day with Rocket.

He likes to spend that free time setting things on fire in the kitchen, in his pajamas, as Rocket the most loyal dog watches.

Alec's shirtless cooking fiesta gets interrupted by Cas, who returns home from school early with a very heartbreaking question about some rude lil shit's birthday that he didn't get invited to.

Poor Cas. :(

He may have left school early, but he does autonomously pull out his homework and finish it for the day. What a good lil bean. <3

Polly then comes home early from school, too, and after a bit of googling I realized that the packed lunches are broken (of course), and that sims will return home from school/work at lunch to eat them.

She also appears to be sick, so at least she benefited from coming home early?

After ordering some medicine for Polly, I decided to make good use of their extra free time, and sent them off to the park to work on their aspiration goals, and meet some other children.

Of course they also need to stop and take a few turns on the slip n' slide, because they have no yardspace for one at home, as much as I'd like to give them one.

I had Jeff and Rocket join them at the park as soon as he got off work, so that Rocket could  try out the obstacle course.

He did extremely good and achieved a perfect run!

At that point Andy showed up with Ariel, and I had Polly spend the rest of the afternoon playing with her.

Cas, on the other hand, sat down to play a couple games of chess with Jeff for his aspiration.

Andy then, for reasons unknown, followed them home and hopped in their bathtub?

Poor Jeff, who I had told to take a shower, walked in on her and got an eyeful.

Is he scared of the mud mask, or the female-presenting nipples? Given how often Jeff walks around shirtless (and the fact that he is currently shirtless), I'm gonna have to go with the mud mask.

Alec escapes having an awkward encounter by being busy with their new washing machine, which I managed to squeeze into Jeff's workout room.

He's got a high handy skill, so I had him install the lintless upgrade immediately to prevent any more tragic fire incidents.

Polly isn't able to use any of Jeff's workout equipment yet, but she can use the basketball court in front of their apartment, which is really nice.

The monkey bars are also really nice to have, and let Polly finish her 'cross the monkey bars three times' goal with ease.

The spice market has got to be my favourite district in San Myshuno by far; the community items are so much better (aside from the podium in Uptown, and the busking areas that all districts have, the other areas really don't have as much to offer), and I really like the Culpepper apartments in particular.

While Polly plays outside, Cas works on his mental skill on the laptop at home.He's already got a science table in their playroom for the last phase of his aspiration, but I'm going to need to find space for a chess table at some point.

He and Jeff both needed to spend some time reading together to complete their aspirations goals, so that worked out really nicely.

In the end I just temporarily set up a little chess table in the twins' bedroom so that Cas could finish that task.

Alec was much more enthusiastic about playing than Jeff was.

Andy's sixth sense kicked in again around Harvestfest, and she showed up with Miko to join the Winchesters for turkey dinner.

Again, it was nice that they just happened to show up, because I hadn't really planned on doing anything special, besides fulfilling the traditions to prevent negative moodlets.

Um excuse me who are all these little shits being rude to my twins??

(Also unrelated to the pop up, but I like that in the background, you can see Polly thinking about exercising. Definitely a mini-Jeff.)

Who needs some rude ass school kids when Polly's got a whole neighbourhood full of kids to play with, anyways? I initiated a group meeting of their new kids club, and let them all get to know each other for a little bit.

(Apparently I must really like those kids sneakers, because I gave them to everyone except Luna...)

Meanwhile, at work, Jeff lifts a heavy thing.

Radical, bro!

"We think he did it on purpose" fuck off, Cas is a good little bean and would never do such a thing on purpose.

I do appreciate the reference, at least.

The twins only get an hour or so to hang out with the kids, before they're off to their first scout meeting.

It's a little annoying that the meetings are on the weekend, since that's the perfect time to have playdates, but at least they're only an hour.

As soon as they got back from their meeting I sent them off to the park with the rest of the paraneighbour kids to have a little more bonding time.

Alec throws his final dinner party on the last night of the rotation, and once again Miko and Andy are invited to celebrate. I didn't take a lot of pictures, but I feel like this one really sums up the majority of the night.

I don't remember what they got for this party - it's possible this was actually the party they earned gold for, and the first one was just a silver - but either way they got at least one gold party this rotation, and Alec managed to complete his master chef aspiration. I've switched him back to his nerd brain aspiration, so he can start working away at that again.

Once again, the twins don't really join in on the celebration - I think I sent them off to bed because they were both pretty tired - but Polly does get up to go yell at Cole for being a noisy bitch.