Life in Pleasantville - Part 4- The Haunted House and Babies, Babies, and More Babies.

As I mentioned in the earlier installment, Lawrence and Katrina Benoit despise each other, but despite my efforts to split them up and move Lawrence to a different house, he up and moved back in with the family of his own accord. In addition, this couple, who despise each other, are breeding like rabbits! In addition to Danica, Kelvin, Zhiddezoe, and Bubba, baby Lynda has joined them and Katrina was about to pop with yet another one!

I added an upper floor to their house to make room for everyone, but they are still needing to share bedrooms.

It was a struggle, and I'm quite proud of myself for successfully adding the upper floor addition on the right on top of an existing frieze level. I had issues with furniture on that floor - it kept settling on the frieze floor instead of the floor above the frieze, but the sims could successfully use the stairs and stand on the correct floor. I finally tried using the Sims 3 Decorator mod that can raise, lower, and tilt objects, and it worked! Danica could use her bed and easel.

I also pulled the right side of the house out as far as it would go on this lot to give this large family a little extra room.

This is the lower floor now. There are 3 cribs in the nursery for Bubba, Lynda, and the next baby. And I guess Katrina has taken over the master bedroom . . . .

leaving poor Lawrence with the loveseat in the kids' room to sleep on, poor guy.

Kelvin has taken over Danica's loft bedroom and has recently had to make room for Zhiddezoe as she aged up to a child.

As soon as Bubba ages into a child, Zhiddezoe will move into Danica's room with her and Bubba will move into Kelvin's room with him.

Danica will become a young adult soon, and I'll need to figure out what to do with her. I'm trying to decide if I want to send her and the Blackmon boys to college or move them to another of my existing games when they age up. It would make sense that they would want to get away from this small town and see what the rest of the world has to offer. The choices would be Roaring Heights, Sunlit Tides, or Riverview. I think Lunastia is a little too far out as none of them seem interested in science or space travel, and Twinbrook has my household that is under the Northwinds Curse and therefore will be moving from place to place, so they need to be their own thing.

I like to have the sims choose their own names for their babies, so when Katrina was about to give birth to Lynda, I went to check on Garrett Dean, the Don Lothario of Pleasantville.

He was still living in the starter home - he hadn't moved in with his love interest Corinna Hebert. Real life hubby was calling me to make breakfast, so I told Garrett to fix himself some bread and jam and lined up a few other things for him to do while I took care of my own breakfast. I didn't pause the game.

I came back to this.

Apparently someone didn't follow my orders! My only guess is that he tried cooking something and the stove caught fire, then he caught fire and didn't have the good sense to jump in the shower. I also think the neighbors came over to try and help, but he didn't have the presence of mind to open the door and let them in so they could put him out! I could see Grim standing in the kitchen, a pile of ashes, and an urn.

The neighbors were going about their own business as sims are wont to do.

I wondered if the urn would vanish and the game would move Garrett to the mausoleum, but the urn stayed put. I had to choose a different household to play, so I went next door to the home of Kesha Herzog because I hadn't met her yet.

Kesha is adventurous, excitable, nurturing, a heavy sleeper, and a mooch. She likes Disco music, firecracker shrimp, and the color purple. She lives in a two bedroom house equipped with a crib and twin bed in the secondary bedroom. And she had a white kitten named Egon, who is a genius and has recently aged up into an adult cat. Kesha wanted to become a private investigator. I usually don't give sims living alone an active career when I'm playing the whole town because they don't earn money when I'm not playing them, but I figured I'd stay with her for a few days and she had close to 20,000 simoleons in the bank, so she could get by while I was away. She met a couple single guys. This guy pictured above is Nathan Beard. He was a paparazzo when she first met him, but has since joined the singer career.

Trever Santana is the town bartender. This makes it hard to get together with him, but maybe she can meet up with him before the bar opens - if he's willing to get together with her. He's turned her down when she tried to invite him over.

Of the two, Nathan is the more accessible. Kesha has taken on a couple piddly sleuth jobs around town: solving Kelvin Benoit's toothbrush issue. . .

which involved bribing his sister Danica to get information from her and learning that Kelvin was just scamming her so he and Danica could split the bribe money. Kids these days!

Then Danica blabbed about how her parents constantly fight and would be better off divorced, but they kept having all these dang kids!

Kesha also met up with Melissa Blackmon who wanted her to hack into Corinna Hebert's computer to see if she was trying to sabotage the library data base. There's no love lost between Melissa and Corinna. Also, it appears that Melissa's very bad week is turning out to be a very bad month.

But I digress. When night falls and Kesha is sleeping snug in her bed, it's clear that weird things are going on next door. I guess Garrett has some "unfinished business."

I thought the baby must have been deleted, then I wondered if Corrine might have had a love child with him, and yep!

Corrine was hanging out at the festival, obviously.

I tried following him around town, but he's too quick for me. I think he gets a certain distance from the house and disappears. It wasn't long before a new resident moved into Garrett's house, courtesy of Story Progression.

Her name is Kori Coffey, and she wants to be a Martial Arts master. Kori was working as a decoy in the criminal career, but wanted to join the sports career. She's a social butterfly who loves the outdoors and can often be seen sitting on the bench in front of her house reading. She is also disciplined, family oriented, and inappropriate.

The cat is Egon, Kesha's cat from next door. I sent Egon over to check things out while Kesha slept. It's strange that there doesn't seem to be any damage to the kitchen, yet Garrett's urn and ashes are still around. I hope Garrett comes out to haunt the place and Kori gets to meet him. That hasn't happened yet. Also, Kori has a little puppy named Piper.

Anyway, Egon got bored sitting around and decided to put his mark on Kori's furniture.

By the way, I learned why Lawrence Benoit isn't doing well at his career. The bar's hours and the criminal career work hours were clashing. I changed the lot from Dive Bar to Visitors Allowed, at least for the time being.

Possible reasons why Kori wants to quit the criminal career: her coworker shows up on her doorstep with his toddler at 5:42 am.

Maybe Katrina thinks something is going on between these two, which would explain their broken relationship. Personally, I didn't see any evidence of this - no flirting, kissing, or giving of flowers.

The other reason Kori might want to switch jobs pronto:

I had her join the athletic career the following day.

I followed Kori to her new job the next day. She managed to make it through the door and get to work on time, but her boss, Alicia Holliday, and coworker, Marie Coleman, were blocked by a bully of a woman named Rene Norman.

"No one can enter the gym without giving me the secret password."

"Is it pollywog? bubbly-water? taco cat? second breakfast? gym socks? snot burger?"

Eventually Marie came across the correct password, and Rene stepped aside granting Marie access and leaving her boss Alicia standing outside scratching her head, wondering how to deal with this situation should it arise again tomorrow.

Once Kori got home, she called up Lawrence and explained that she wasn't at work because she took another job she felt was a better fit.

She learned that he and Katrina had yet another baby.

"I wonder how you guys manage to keep up on the housework, let alone feed all those little ones!"

The newest addition is baby Gerard. He's brave, but hates the outdoor.

I checked back in on Kesha, who had apparently had enough with all the trivial cases she was working and decided she would rather just join the law enforcement career. Perhaps she will find love there.