The Gregory Legacy, Chapter 12

And we're back with another chapter of The Gregory Legacy! Last chapter we ended with the birth of twin boys to Aaron (who wants a Big, Happy Family) and child-hating Dayna. What is this dichotomous duo and their family up to now? Read on to find out!

Before that, let's take a little stop at the House for Wayward Spares. Henry has finally joined his sister, aunt, uncle, and all of their spouses. He'll be free to live out his days here in happiness (we assume), but first, we need to get him and his girlfriend Bria together.

Since Bria is still a teen, Henry whips up a quick cake and invites her over. Only Bryson and Tessa celebrate Bria's birthday, but at least Henry was there, I guess. With a young adult girlfriend, Henry embarks on the steps that will make her his wife.

First, though . . .
"Pardon me, passing through. Just out on a jog. Definitely not here to remind everyone that I'm the heir and this story is ultimately about me right now. Yup, nice jog."

Subtle, Aaron.

With Aaron out of the way, Henry and Bria get engaged and then quickly elope in front of the Goth house, as is the style for my spares. I wasn't so sure about Bria's formal mint green hat, but it does match Henry's glasses, so I decided I'm okay with it.

One last snapshot from this house. I saw Bryson's portrait turn red, noticed he was 'very angry,' and had to figure out what had happened. What I pieced together is this: while Bria and Henry were otherwise engaged and Dorian was still in bed, Dorian's insane wife, Molly (in black) decided to flirt with Tessa (in light blue), despite Tessa's husband, Bryson, being in the room, and both of them being straight (as far as I know) and, more importantly, married. Tessa was appropriately embarrassed for accepting the flirt, but Bryson was not pleased and I had to play for another several sim hours of cold showers and cool downs in the mirror before he calmed down and I felt safe leaving him. Jeez, you guys. Wayward spares indeed.

Back at the main house, and things look a little different. Did you guys do something new?

"Very funny. Where is my house? And more importantly, where are my babies?!"

It's cool, Aaron. Liam and Luke are safely stored in the corner of the lot, right next to the trashcan and mailbox, as is traditional storing procedure for infants. In the far corner you can see all of our plants and Jaron and Natalie's urns, and on the left, our mysterious grass puddle that nobody can mop has reappeared after being gone for a generation or so. I guess it got covered up by something when I built the last house, but it's back now! Yay. Anyway, I decided it was time for a new house, and set about building one.

This is the result. I was going for kind of a country garden estate feel. As of this point in the game, I wasn't too sure about the house, but I had spent too much time to go back now. I intend to do some major landscaping to get the 'garden estate' part of the house up to snuff, as well as some major interior decorating when they've earned some more money. We're still trying to get Marjorie's Mansion Baron aspiration before she croaks.

Here's the back of the house, with all their goodies and a mausoleum, plus a lot of terrain paint that I painstakingly painted on in semi-straight lines because there's a bug preventing me from putting flooring down correctly around the pool, and I wanted all the outdoor flooring to match and to nearly match the house. I won't be doing a tour right now because the inside is pretty much bare except for the furniture they kept from before, which was just the essentials. I can tell you, though, that it is two stories and a basement plus that little third-floor nook and balcony that was meant to house the observatory but ended up being a bit too small. I couldn't reconfigure it easily without redoing the entire roof setup, so now it's just a random balcony. Once they earn a bit more and I feel a bit more motivated (building is draining, guys!) then I'll do the interior and take some overhead shots. One more note: the house might be a little too big for them, but again, I put a lot of time into it, so for now we'll just deal with it.

Once the babies are safely placed in the nursery, Aaron and Dayna head up to care for their newborn sons. They've got their hands full right now.

However, because Aaron needs three children for his aspiration and that's tradition anyway, they try again right away for another baby. On another note, Dayna kept getting squeamishly uncomfortable in the kitchen and I couldn't figure out why since it's spotless. Then I realized the cichlid in the fish bowl was foul. No one else cares, but when I switched it out with a normal-freshness fancy goldfish, suddenly she liked the kitchen a lot better!

While Dayna sleeps off her conception tension, Aaron checks his armpit for gnomes or something. He does seem to be storing a Z up there, so maybe that's what's tickling him.

"Ahh! No! Not the confetti! No more confetti!"

Yay! Another baby is on the way. Dayna is . . . thrilled.

Liam and Luke are not on the same schedule at all, so it takes the whole family to care for them, or else Aaron and Dayna would be up at all hours of the night. I tried to get them at least on the same feeding schedule, but they had other plans, I guess. So far, twins are not too bad, but it would definitely be a lot harder if there were only two adults in the house.

"What in the world am I doing caring for babies again?"

Well, you don't hate them yet and you woke up early, so it's your shift, Marjorie.

Pregnant Dayna heads to the museum for her aspiration, where she meets Tessa.

"So here's the funny thing, Dayna. She thought she missed the bullet when I wasn't heiress since I hate children too, but then you had to age up with that trait. Isn't that hilarious?"
"Yeah, hilarious. I'm feeling a little faint. It must be all this BEING PREGNANT THAT I DIDN'T WANT TO BE ANYWAY. So please excuse me."

When Dayna arrives home, there's something different about the lot. Perhaps it's that ALL the terrain paint has disappeared.  :(  I did some research and I guess this is just a thing that happens sometimes. I just hope it doesn't become a regular thing, because it seriously took a while to put it all down straight in the first place.

While I was replacing the terrain paint, I decided to go ahead and landscape the front of the house so at least it looks more like the image I had in my head. I think it looks about a million times better with the landscaping, and I'm really in love with this ivy by Veranka. I'm trying not to get a lot of CC, but the house demanded some ivy. For right now, the rest of the lot is unlandscaped, but I'd like to do more when they have enough money.

Poor Dayna stares wistfully out the window while caring for the twins and extremely pregnant.

"Where did I go wrong?"

Probably in marrying a legacy sim. Just a thought.

It's finally birthday time, and wow does Liam remind me a lot of Aaron at this age. He even has the same haircut!

Luke also got that haircut, but he, while definitely having some of Aaron's characteristics, looks more like Dayna.

And they're instantly pulling faces. I love these guys already!!

I made them over and put this little graphic together to demonstrate how much they have in common. Liam's head is larger and all his features are spaced a little more widely, but the boys really resemble each other. They have the exact same nose and mouth, as well. Luke is actually in his formal wear in this picture because I gave them the same haircut, but Luke wears hats in most of his outfits.

Just after the boys grew up, Aaron came home with a promotion! He's working his way up the astronaut career, but he's still a ways from actually getting on a rocket unless he takes the one in the backyard.

So here's the boys' full outfits. That's Luke on the left, who is insane, and Liam on the right, who is evil. Good to see we're still raising them right in this family. Luke wants to be a Rambunctious Scamp and Liam aims to be a Social Butterfly, which is very amusing to me since he's evil.

The boys had school the next day but the adults had gone to bed (except for Marjorie who was still at work), so I told them to do their homework, and they just sat right down in the nursery and did it. Okay. I guess the desks were too far away or something.

Then, when the homework is done, I told both of them to get a bowl of cereal, and they trudged all the way back up from the kitchen/dining, where there are plenty of chairs, to stand around and eat their cereal while chatting in the second-floor nursery. You know, boys, you did grow up. You have to leave the nursery some time.

Marjorie has gotten her final promotion and doesn't she look excited? Surly as usual. That's my Marjorie. We got the awesome gaming mat and Nathan instant-upgraded it fully the next day, so now we have The Ultimate Gaming Mat. I will note that it took a potion of youth for Marjorie to reach the top of her career, which does not bode well for me when I play my apocalypse eventually.

"Luke, what the heck are you wearing?"
"My pjs. Why? What are you wearing?"
"No, I mean, why are you still wearing your hat with . . . that."
"It keeps my thoughts in. You would not want to clean up that mess without it."
"Oooookay."

Good news! Marjorie's darling grandchildren make her angry. I'm so glad this trait is ingrained in this family.

Dayna's about ready to be done with being pregnant. She's pretty good at it, and I keep her happy enough that she's rarely actually tense, but I imagine it's still not easy.

The Plague has continued in to September, although it's mostly Aaron that's coming down with diseases now. I actually had him buy some medicine en masse and just keep that in his inventory for just such an occasion.

"Hey, Dad. I could use some advice. What do I do with grandchildren?"
"Well, I never met mine in life, since someone got rejected for her proposal and was slow on the babymaking . . ."
"Thanks for reminding me."
"However, I imagine you ought to, y'know, love them and spoil them and stuff."
"Well, you're no help."

 

I played the birth of Dayna and Aaron's third child and the game crashed shortly after, so I had some pictures that technically didn't 'count,' but I just had to include this one. Dayna is actually dazed due to coming down with an illness right after giving birth to a daughter, but it looks like she is dazed by the prospect of having another child, and I find this picture really funny so I had to include it.

Here's how it actually went down in the version I was able to save. Aaron was trying to distract Dayna from her labor with some flirting in their big, empty bedroom, but she had the heebie-jeebies from something. I recognize this from other times as her squeamish trait acting up, so I assume someone probably left a dirty dish on the dresser that's just out of the shot or something. Again, however, it looks like she's reacting poorly to the imminent birth of her child, which is probably true too.

Aaron had his pre-parental panic and ran around the house for a few minutes before I could get him back to pay attention to his wife.

However, they spent the rest of the time together and although Dayna was too uncomfortable to be overcome by the very flirty moodlet, she did have it. Aaron was definitely in the mood, though. I just love these two together. Difficult or not, they are such a cute couple and so in love.

"Aaron, you better not be checking out my butt as I'm giving birth to your spawn. That's how we got in to this mess in the first place."
"Sorry, hon. I am very flirty, you know. And that is one nice . . ."
"Aaron!"

Once again, like the timeline that crashed, Dayna gives birth to a little girl. To stick with the L names, they name her Laurel. Both parents are very pleased to welcome a daughter to their family.

Once Laurel is taken care of, the ruling couple heads down to the hot tub, which no one has actually used before. Aaron has a whim to woohoo in it from still being very flirty, so I decide to indulge him. Dayna, who just finished a quick swim (also a whim) is happy to join him.

A little while later . . .
"Damn, Aaron!"

Five minutes after that . . .
"Dammit, Aaron!"

Yeah, we're gonna go for a fourth kid even though we don't need one. I just like sim babies and an heir with a family aspiration is a good excuse. Aaron seems happy with the decision. On another note, check out how ripped he's getting from working out all the time. Back to Aaron the father, he's happy, but what about Dayna?

Well, like usual, she's not very happy about being pregnant, but she is very in love with her husband. Marjorie's time as one generation of child-hating is nearly up; I can handle one more. I just hope none of Dayna's children inherit the trait, although that's a distinct possibility.

 

On that note, we've reached the end of the chapter. To see how Liam, Luke, Laurel and the soon-to-arrive Gregory I'm calling Baby L for now grow up and how the house develops inside, as well as other bits and bobs of Gregory lifestyle like what Nathan - who is still alive, by the way - is up to, check back soon for more updates. Thanks for reading, and please check in with me at SiMania or Boolprop! :)