Sims 3: Zodiac Challenge - Chapter 4, The Rabbit

Hialeah practicing at the ballet bar like her mama!

And bonding with her little brother, Remy, as he tells a ghost story.  I like to think he's very good at it, for obvious reasons.  His first wishes as a child were to buy a PC, learn to write, and start writing a sci-fi book.  It's called Ghostboy.  It is less fictitious than it may seem.

Sequoyah had a ghost-hunting job that took him back to his and Bunny's old place, so he picked up the family graves and took them to his original ancient burial ground.  He stopped by to say hi to his great-uncle while he was there.

Then he went home to make Hialeah's birthday cake!  I like this little oven, you can make all sorts of baked goods with it.

Hialeah has a unique sense of style.  She's also a lot cooler than you and everyone you know.

Here are Remy and his dad bonding over playing chess!

I figured out how to use the diagonal foundation, so I practiced by building a bandstand.  Hialeah is learning to play the keyboard, like her father.

This is their third child, Daniel, who had an uneventful baby and toddlerhood.  Bunny is already pregnant with their fourth.

Daniel also has brown hair and blue eyes, so I think he and Remy must both take after Sequoyah.  I checked in CAS and he also has blue eyes.  If you recall, I actually created his ancestors and bred him from them.  The vast majority of them were native American inspired, but two were white, so I guess he got his eyes from them.  Daniel likes the colour pink, and when told to improve his skills, took himself off to the ballet barre (which, to be fair to him, is one of the few options open to children).  I love him, I think he'll be an astronaut like his grandpa.

Bunny is four days away from aging up, so I need to rethink their ages.  Their fourth child will be the heir, which means Bunny is 49 now.  There's one final child to go.  Let's say there were 3-4 years between Hialeah and Remy, 2 years between Remy and Dan (since they were both in cribs at the same time), 3 years between Dan and child four, and another 1-2 years between children four and five.  So;

Bunny is 49 when child four is 0, Dan is 3, Remy is 5, and Hialeah is 9.

When Bunny is 51, child five is 0, four is 2, Dan is 5, Remy is 7, and Hialeah is 11.

That means Hialeah aging up into a teenager happened a little bit fast, but if she's any older, her and Remy being children together doesn't work.  I might need to keep Hialeah young for a little longer so her sibling can catch up.  That or rework my maths.  I am unclear.

Sims 3: Zodiac Challenge - Chapter 4, The Rabbit

Hialeah has aged up into a toddler!  Surprisingly, she has her grandfather's hair colour.  Sequoyah and Bunny take it in turns to care for her.  She is doted on.  Bunny is determined not to be like her own parents, and Sequoyah is delighted to have a living family again.  

This is my current family - three horses, two adults (one a ghost), a toddler, and two cats.  Sequoyah is halfway through his lifetime goal, since it turns out that adopting animals from the shelter counts towards it.  Bunny already has a wish for a second child, but I want to wait a little while.  I'm currently working on Kismet the Horse.  He's mastered the riding and jumping skills, so the only goals he has left are to keep winning advanced and international competitions.  I want that done - and I want Bunny to win at least one of each type of international competition - then he can father a foal on Buffy Horse, who will be the next one to fully master the skills.  Anyway, Bunny's pregnancies get in the way of that, and while they do extend her life, Kismet has no such mechanism (though Bunny does have the lifetime points award to make pets live longer).

Sequoyah got a wish to hire a butler, which I've never done before.  The butler lives with you, so I built a cute little gatehouse for them to live in.  They can keep an eye on the paparazzi from there.  Sequoyah also adopted a dog called Roux, so that's his bed outside the butler's house.  I'm now tempted to actually build a gatehouse, as in, over the gate.  Maybe next time.

By the time of Hialeah's first birthday, Bunny is already pregnant again.  This was an accident; I used the "risky woohoo" option, which is only 10% risky.  Apparently that's enough.  The more you know!  Hialeah gained the "animal lover" trait as a child, which makes a lot of sense.

This is Remy (and our butler, Davis)!  He's a little ghost-child.  I checked in CAS (when he aged up to a toddler), and he'd have brown hair and blue eyes if you could see them, so I imagine he'd look a lot like Jake.

Sequoyah continues with his ghost-hunting job.   I'd like to get him and Bunny to the top of their careers, as well as have them have five children

Hialeah dressed formally for her little brother's birthday party.

The butler is exhausted because he refused to enter his special butler-house.  I gave him a room upstairs and he seemed to like that better.  Well, he started actually sleeping anyway.

Unfortunately, Remy's cake caught fire and Sequoyah had a bit of a panic attack.  Bunny doesn't know this - because she never really knew most of her family - but the same thing happened at her great-aunt Rosemary's birthday, and her mum had to skip work to sort out the mess.

Here is Sequoyah and Remy bonding.  Sequoyah got a wish to buy a seesaw, and I just decided to go the whole hog and build a little playpark on their land.  The wall is so the horses don't come crashing straight into the children.

Bunny came out to play guitar and Hialeah came to play on the slide, so it became a whole family bonding session.

Bunny's expecting again!  I swear, I'm only picking the risky option, and I never hear the chime, but then she's showing a few days later.  She did have a wish to have a child, and Sequoyah has wishes to have both a boy and a girl, so this is working out well!  It means the horse-riding goals are taking a bit of a backseat.  I want Buffy to master the racing skill (since she's already mastered the jumping skill), and then she and Kismet (who has already mastered all his goals) can conceive the greatest race horse who ever lived.

I just liked this shot.  Three generations in one!  Remy will not be the heir, but Bunny's next child might.  Since she's the rabbit and he'll be the dragon, she'll have to be around 37 (I know sims don't really age that way, but I like to pretend they do).  I know she was at least 30 when she and Sequoyah met, and though they've had their children quite close together, she must be getting close.  The only other option is 49, which is a bit much.

Another gift-giving day rolled around!  Remy didn't really understand, but Hialeah enjoyed it.  I also love Bunny's outfit, and I'm not totally sure whether I gave it to her or the game did.  I'm not sure why Antoine showed up in his swim trunks, but at least he didn't pull out a drum kit like Honey Darnell did.

Sims 3: Zodiac Challenge - Chapter 4, The Rabbit

Following their engagement, Bunny and Sequoyah moved into a new house.  It's to make a new start, to have more room for horse training and because, tbh, I really prefer living in houses I built myself.  The pre-built houses always feel a bit like a rental - I never want to change too much.  I completely forgot to bring the graves, so I need to go grab them and move them to the Locklear family graveyard.  It's a good sign, for Bunny's mental health, that I forgot them.  She's moving forward with her life.

Also, we have cows now!  It was one of the store downloads, all of which are available here, since the store doesn't seem to be supported any more.  They work like the chickens - did I mention that we have chickens? - in that you just need to feed them and collect milk/eggs every day.

Sequoyah's lifetime wish is to adopt 6 stray pets.  This stray dog randomly showed up at our door, and Sequoyah was in the middle of making friends with it when it just disappeared into the ether.

Bunny threw a party to announce her pregnancy and her engagement to a ghost.

She's a little unsure of how her friends - Honey and Johnny Darnell, and Alice and Antoine Crews - will take it.

Alice is not a massive fan of ghosts - which is the case with most sims - but she eventually came round.

 

Bunny has also adopted a new horse and a new foal, so now we have three horses!  There's room for four in the barn.  Sequoyah is also planning to adopt two cats, and since they need to have five children for the legacy challenge, I might need to get a mod that allows for a larger household.

Bunny invited the same group - Alice, Antoine, Honey, and Johnny - for the wedding.  Here she is, telling Alice how happy she is that Alice can attend her wedding.  It's very casual, apart from the paparazzi.  I'm considering building a bigger wall with a gate to keep them out, but the gate is one square larger than the path I draw - amd the porch stairs - so that's putting me off.  It has just occurred to me that I could just make the stairs a little bigger, so that's an option. 

I suggest that you start playing this song for the next part.  I did.

The day after the wedding, Bunny gave birth!  This is Hialeah Locklear.  Since Sequoyah proposed, my family name is now Locklear, which Bunny likes because it's another barrier between her and her mother.

I randomised her traits, so she's an athletic genius.  My dream is still for her to become an architect - and to paint the legacy portraits of Bunny and the dragon heir - so she'll probably work on that in childhood, get into horse riding in her teen years, and then become an architect as a young adult.  Neither Bunny nor Sequoyah have had fertility treatment, so they're unlikely to have twins and will, instead, go through five pregnancies.  This will extend Bunny's life, and Sequoyah is already immortal, so I should be able to play with them for a good long time.

They're doing some pretty good co-parenting.  Bunny's had time to write a book!

Of course, she's Scarlett "Bunny" Locklear now, but Bunny Ursine is still the name she became famous with.   Hialeah didn't inherit the celebrity status of her parents, but I hope the heir will.

Sims 3: Zodiac Challenge - Chapter 4, The Rabbit

It's hard for Bunny, as a family-oriented sim, to deal with the fact that the only family she has with her are all dead.

She likes the fact that Sequoyah understands.  All his family are dead too.  She never has to pretend with him.  She doesn't have to be happier or friendlier than she really feels, she can just...be.

So what happens next is pretty inevitable.

Sequoyah becomes a ghost hunter because, tbh, I found it funny.  He's pretty good at it.  It helps that he can walk through walls, and, I like to think, he can empathise with the ghosts and help them understand that they need to move on.

Sequoyah doesn't have the family-oriented trait, but he likes the idea of having a baby.  Neither Bunny or Sequoyah believe that that's possible, which is one of the things that's causing Bunny to hold back on their relationship.

A few days after Bunny and Sequoyah have begun interacting romantically, Bunny has a riding accident.  Kismet stumble on the pyrotechnique jump, then throws her to the ground, which is lucky, because she's on fire. 

Bunny has no lasting injuries, but remember that Sequoyah burned to death.  Seeing Bunny run past him on fire makes him realise how strong his feelings for her are.

Later that day, Bunny realises that she's pregnant, so it's really lucky that this game doesn't allow for harm to come to foetuses.  Since she's a celebrity, she's constantly followed by paparazzi.  I'm pretty sure having a child with a ghost counts as a scandal, so we'll see how that works out.  Sequoyah is also a celebrity, due to his relationship with Bunny, but he's only had one photo taken of him so far.

At home, Bunny tells Sequoyah about the baby.   He's pretty happy about it.

Bunny said yes!  She's still not sure about being in love with a ghost - what happens when she grows old?  What will people say? - but one of her biggest fears was not being able to have children, so that's no longer an issue.

At some point in this session, I realised that Bunny only had four character traits, so I gave her 'loner' as well.  I think it suits her.  She's good and friendly, but still tends to keep people at arm's length.

Here's an update on the Legacy Challenge.  According to the two sources, I'm using, these are the Rabbit's goals;

Now, Bunny isn't particularly artistic.  She does like to be surrounded by family - hence the ghosts - and her new friends - hence the dinner parties.  This trait is holding her back - she can't move on with her life when she holds on to her family's past too tightly.  She's a good friend, kind, and amiable, but she's also reserved and cautious - she has lots of friends, but very few that she's really close to.  She has the good and family orientated traits, and Sequoyah is her first romantic relationship.  That only leaves the five kids to achieve.

The next generation will be the Dragon, my own sign.  These are the traits he will need to have.  (I never formally decided on alternating genders in each generation, but it does seem to be going that way).

I plan to (mostly) randomise the traits of Sequoyah and Bunny's children, so I don't know yet which one will be the dragon.  I really want to try out the architect career, and I need a portrait of Bunny, so their eldest child will be artistic.  Although, that said, she doesn't have to be - she can just like art and get good at through only working hard, and not having natural talent.  She will be the grandchild of two artists though.