Last time I played The Waters family, Susie age-glitched into a teen, completely bypassing her childhood. After much internal debate on what to do, I decided to follow my gut feeling and just keep plowing ahead. Thankfully this matched the reader feedback so I wasn't at too much risk of pissing any of you off LOL. And thankyou everyone for your comments and suggestions!!

After decided to just go with the flow..., I was happy to see that it really didn't appear to be affecting anyone at all. In fact, it didn't even appear to be a blip on their radar of weirdness, which was of course, wierd!

Since Melani was having her own life drama, I decided to leave her to settle in with Hal for a bit and tonight, I stuck my head back in on the Waters to see if everything was still running smoothly. It was... scarily so.

Thomas was still doing well in school. Outside of school he was making friends and appeared to be doing ok. With all that's happened recently - Adrian and Richard (Grandpa) dying, Emily being unable to cope with it all, and Susie aging up too quickly, the poor boy has been feeling a bit pushed aside lately. I've not yet seen this wish come up...

After a quick hug and a chat to mum, the wish was granted. The poor bugger must have been feeling very ignored...

Quickly filling Thomas' almost bare room were gems, butterflies, gold and iron bars. The butterflies she could explain away, boys always like to torture bugs. But the gems? The iron and gold bars?! These were not normal possessions for a young boy. Especially not a boy from a family barely able to afford food. Something was up here, and she was going to get to the bottom of it.

For now, Susie decided she wasn't going to tell her mother. She wanted to find out what was going on first, she didn't see any point in upsetting Emily if there was no real reason to. Perhaps Thomas did have a believable excuse...

Susie herself was doing ok. Struggling with school work due to being dumped into high school with absolutely no primary school education what so ever, she's been frustrated and abandoning her homework for more enjoyable activities. She's been wanting to raise her logic skill in the hope it will help her succeed at school and has been begging Emily constantly for a telescope. Using the only current funds the household has, Emily caved and made the purchase.

Susie was ecstatic and ran outside to use it straight away. Five minutes later she returned inside (as she has "hates the outdoors" as one of her traits) to complain to Emily about the bugs, wind and bright sun. She immediately started asking for a chess table she could use inside instead. Emily could only sigh... it didn't bode well for her finances if Susie was going to be one of those children who constantly had their hand out.

Emily told her she could play chess on the computer and make do until she could afford a table of her own. With a sigh and a groan, Susie jumped online. The teenage frustration quickly changed however when Susie discovered there was more to the computer than 2D pixelated chess - there was the ability to chat to all her friends at school, browse the Internet and so much more.

Quickly, scanning her options, Susie discovered the pot of gold...

It didn't take her long to start poking fun at the members of the forum she visited. I couldn't quite make out what kind of forum she was on, but there was some shaking of fists and angry typing. I can only assume it was a gaming forum of some sort, I know they do my head in pretty quickly most times lol. Or perhaps it was a forum for teenagers to complain about their cheap, money hording parents? Who knows...

What ever forum she was on however, it caused enough of an impact for Susie to finally get a lifetime wish pop up. Obviously when you create a sim, you get to choose their lifetime goal before they even enter the world, but for children growing up, you have to pick them. Normally you chose when they transition from a toddler to a child, however Susie was only a child for approximately 15 minutes, so I never got the chance.

So far I've only had to choose a lifetime wish for two children - Seth and Ricky, Melani's boys. I'm still waiting for Thomas' wish to appear. So far I've had two author wishes come up, so was happy to see something different this time.

Um, Astronaut Susie? Really? That's reaching for the stars a bit isn't it? Oh, reaching for the stars... har har I crack myself up. *rolls eyes* All puns aside, that's a bit rich for a child who never attended primary school and is barely coping with high school. That will be an interesting life goal to accomplish. I guess I better make her quit her job at the local spa and start working a bit harder towards outer space huh?

With the kids appearing to be coping just fine, Emily has been busying herself with her book writing - a new found talent she is thoroughly enjoying. With her first Sci-Fi book hitting the shelves just days ago, she has begun working on another Drama novel. With the two deaths fuelling the first, it's Susie's age jump that is the inspiration for the follow up...

Working at the Grocery store is still going well - mind numbingly easy and suiting her just fine. Looking over the vegetables the other day, she had a wish come up to do a spot of gardening. Feeling the fond memories of Adrian welling up inside, she pocketed an apple seed to bring home and plant. After Adrian's hard work perished, she thought it fitting to chose that as her first seed to plant - Adrian always loved his apple trees.

Emily decided it was time to finally dig up the extremely dead plants from the garden. Once loved by Adrian and Grandpa on a daily basis, Emily did not have the time, or the strength to tend to it herself. Instead, she watched it die slowly. Each dead leaf dropping like the tears from her face until there was nothing left by the memory of it's former glory. She held onto it for as long as she could. And when she couldn't hold onto it any longer, she tried to ignore it.

With her weekends clear of work, she decided Saturday morning that it was time to dig it up. Adrian was well and truly gone now, it was time to move on with her life.

The garden that Adrian loved so much, the same one that gave Adrian and his father time together, is all but dead. I had planned to keep it going, but it's just too much work. I should have known because two Sims looking after it barely kept it weed free, I couldn't really expect Emily to do it on her own, let alone alone with two toddlers. I had tried to put a sprinkler down to at least cut out the watering time, but Adrian planted the garden down the side of the house, and a sprinkler doesn't fit.

I managed to get a couple of last harvests out of it, which is good because without that, I would have run out of money completely. But now they're all dead, there will be no more harvests. Emily can't quite bring herself to pull them all up yet... she keeps crying everything she goes outside. Perhaps it's still memories of Adrian working out there every day. One day, down the track, I might plant a small garden to replace it, in memory of Adrian.

While I really like the gardening in Sims 3, I do also miss the ability to hire gardeners from Sims 2. I want the nice garden, and I want to be able to potter around in it, but I don't necessarily want to spend every waking minute out there. I'd love to be able to hire a gardener to come say once a week, to play catch up on anything I've missed - or do it all if I'd had a busy week.

Or maybe, the ability to hire the town kids to water or weed it, so I can just harvest. Maybe that could even be a job our own Sim kids can do after school - to work on other people's gardens. And when they bring in a Seasons expansion (and they bloody better too), we'll have leaves falling - how many kids got pocket money for raking up leaves? That's something that could be incorporated into the gardening aspect.

Not to mention mowing the lawns... my grass stays very short for a game with no lawn mowers.

So, I created The Waters Family (the insane asylum) because I have been very, very busy working on a project. Because I have been working so hard - and I'm happy to say almost done working on it - I've not really been having a chance to play with my Sims. So I had the idea to create a family that I wasn't going to touch in any way and let them play out in the background to entertain me. Sort of like a screen saver to stare at when your brain needs a break.

But... they were BORING! So bloody boring. Yes they can look after themselves to a certain extent - grandpa really did push the boundaries of hygiene however - but other than that, they never did anything. They stuck around the house and did nothing. So I was forced to start nudging them along... with my foot. Autonomy is great when you need to pee in real life, you're Sims won't die. But outside of that, they don't do anything on their own, they have no story to tell you.

Problem is, I am approaching the end of my project, I'm almost at the finish line. And because I've had to intervene with The Waters, I've grown somewhat attached. I had never planned to really keep this family, and had certainly no plans to continue playing them after my busy period was over. But... I kinda like them. The insane ways of eating out of the garbage bin and talking to the fridge have won me over.

And now... there's kids involved. Everything's harder when theirs kids involved!

Arg, I don't know what to do. I have too many families and so not enough time. Although Max has some proving to do because the life of a Rockstar might be glamorous for him, but it's not really ringing my bells at the moment. He's more a Saturday night Sim - for when I want to party and see how many female Sims I can bed down. =p

So what do I do? Do I keep the Waters and slot them into my playing time somehow? Or do I bite the bullet and kill them all off? I can't just stop playing them and leave them there... I need to embrace or cut all ties.

Am I the only one with FIVE active families out there?! Maybe it's me that's insane...

It's really starting to concern me just how much time father and son seem to spend with each other. I looked over to see they both enjoy a spot of gardening together...

Having a non working family member around is proving to be quite helpful however. Not only does he look after the garden almost constantly, he occassionally cleans, throws the old newspapers away and looks after the new baby. Course, he doesn't really contribute much outside of that to the household lol...