5.36 The Form of a Family

When the invitation to Adam Bookabet and Ali Mentary-Hodgins’ wedding arrived, the big surprise was that it had taken so long. Ali apparently took a lot of time adjusting to Adam’s large and unruly family.

They kept the wedding modest — an arch Adam’s parents’ back yard and a reception inside with home cooking, dancing to the radio, and all the video games you could play.

The Bookabet house wasn’t huge, and it was stuffed with so many laughing, drinking people that it could be hard to get a place to breathe. That was probably why Xia walked in on Anita Bookabet in the bathroom. Anita stayed on the opposite side of the room from Xia after that. Xia murmurred to Sky under her breath, “I wish she’d stop looking at me like that! It was totally an accident. She’s not my type.”

After the obligatory first dance between bride and groom, they turned the music to live recordings of Ghostwriter, and Sky grabbed Adam for a dance or two.

“You finally did it,” Sky said to Adam. “I was wondering what took you so long.”

“Ali wasn’t sure she wanted to marry anyone,” Adam admitted, “but I brought her around.”

Ali had broken away from the crowd and was playing video games on her laptop in the kitchen. Big parties really didn’t seem to be her thing.

“Thing is, I’ve been wondering the same thing about you,” Adam said. “What’s taking YOU so long?”

Sky’s dance moves slowed. “Me? What’s taking me so long about what?”

Adam nodded over his shoulder to Xia, who was now tearing up the floor Adam’s elderly father, Franco.

Sky blanched pale silver. “I don’t know what you mean,” she said. “I already proved how bad I am at marriage. The last thing I want to do is screw things up with Xia by tying her down.”

Adam raised an eyebrow. “Have you ever asked her what she wants?” he asked.

“We talk about it all the time,” Sky said defensively. “No commitment.”

“Uhuh,” Adam said.

“You’re just going all newlywed on me!” Sky cried.

Adam laughed. “OK. You got me!”

Then there was cake, and finally everyone gathered on the porch to shower Adam and Ali Bookabet-Mentary on with glitter and confetti as they left on their honeymoon. Half drunk and laughing, Sky and Xia staggered home arm in arm to relieve the babysitter — almost, but not quite, like an old married couple.

Dylan’s birthday rolled around a few days later. They decided on a simple party at the park pavilion and invited family and Dylan’s friends from school.

This was the second time in recent memory that Sky’d had to share one of Dylan’s life moments with Leah and Plum. Xia squeezed her hand in silent support, and Sky kept her smile up and her mind on her oldest son.

Uncle Hunter arrived just after Dylan blew out the candles, looking more than a bit worse for wear.

“It’s a unicorn thing,” he said dismissively. “Sometimes Meteor is a lot more like a real meteor than you’d expect.”

Dylan laughed and couldn’t help but take a picture.

While everyone else was eating cake, Sky took a moment to audition with the pavilion director for a performance timeslot.

It went very well. It would be her first paid gig as a solo artist!

Dylan preferred things mellow. He spent some time with his cousin Ash, then a lot more time with his best friend from school. She was going into baking and brought more muffins and cake to a party that was already about cake. Dylan bought some just to be polite. He always was a boy who appreciated being polite.

“Hunter,” Eliana’s strained voice rose over the din over conversation.

Hunter was deconstructing Sky’s audition performance with her and wasn’t paying a lot of attention to his wife.

“Hunter!”

“Eh, what dear?”

“Hunter, get over here! The baby is coming!”

Hunter’s eyes became round. “The what! Baby!” He jumped up and grabbed Eliana by the arm, dragging her out of the park, shouting, “Make way! Pregnant woman coming through! Baby! Baby! Baby!”

Shortly after, he called to breathlessly inform Sky that her first full-blooded niece, Gina Sample-Baerwyn had been born. Gina had Eliana’s mother’s copper skin too. Apparently those genes were strong.

It was hard to keep the party going after that spectacle, and Dylan didn’t seem to mind. He wasn’t terribly wild about being the center of attention anyway.

So the whole family headed home to… well, be a family.

Sky realized that she was content.

Maybe for the first time.

———-

Pictures resumed right after Dylan aged up, and I lost his full-face shot. I cannot express how ABSOLUTELY ADORABLE he grew up. Hopefully you’ll be able to see better in later posts.

Adam and Ari’s wedding was a party invite from the Bookabet clan that I gave a story purpose, same as I did with Garry and Arya. I even gave both sims the “Just Married” moodlet to give the story some authenticity. I’m terribly grumpy about losing it. It was the most rockin NPC party I’ve ever attended, with a good 10 attendees (half of which were Bookabets, but still) crammed in a 20×20 house. Most of them were dancing to the stereo. So cute.

The party was pretty hilarious, what with Hunter having blown himself up and Eliana going into labor. I have no idea what he might be doing these days that would involve blowing up. Mostly he gardens and wins races with Meteor.

Leah still has a terrifyingly bad relationship with Sky, though :(.

And now the long screenshot drought is over.

Also, I haven’t been playing for at least a month due to computer trouble. My Windows partition on my elderly Macbook Pro blew up its boot sector without warning (or something like that — this is out of my area of technical expertise). The bottom line is that I could access the files from OSX, but I couldn’t boot to Windows. So I was able to get the most up-to-date files off the computer, but then I had to wipe out the partition. We decided that the old computer had gotten pretty creaky and it was a good idea to have a new one regardless.  Thus, I have spent the last month ordering and configuring a new computer. Did you know that installing Sims 3 from scratch is a huge pain in the butt? You did??

I now have everything installed except the CC and mods, I think, and I’ll probably take a deep breath and try to load a save game sometime soon. You know… this might make me move the Samples to Monta Vista earlier than intended. I love Avalon with a passion, but I’m using a custom world by Bakafox that I edited in CAW myself… and you can’t load a save game if the world isn’t installed properly. Well, there’s no reason to panic until there’s a reason to panic. Wish me luck :).

6 thoughts on “5.36 The Form of a Family

  1. What?? Leave Avalon after all that WORK??

    Others have already said this, but your story writing is so good that the pictures are just embellishments; it's unbelievably easy to get caught up in the Sample lives, even without actually seeing it.

    I still miss Charles, (and Ada!! ::tear::) but Sky's story is probably my favorite, so far. But then, I'm sure I'll feel that way about the next generation, too…

  2. Haha! I really don't want to leave Avalon! But I do want to play in some other worlds too. It's so hard…

    I spent a lot of time fretting about whether I'd have Sims3Packs for Avalon and the custom Sunlit Tides with dive lots I'm using for Waypoint. It's pretty scary when you can't even load your save game to get the family out if the world isn't installed.

    BUT, I'm happy to report that the Sims3Packs were in my backups exactly where I would have thought to put them. And clearly I DID think that. I just forgot. 🙂 I successfully loaded up the Samples this morning. What a relief.

    I really am terribly torn about whether to stay in Avalon. I have a great group of genes in the town population too. If the family moves to Monte Vista, I'm going to make it a part of Avalon, though, and make all the residents into elves and maybe even drop in a few of those awesome fantasy trees. At any rate, I think the very earliest I'd move would be after the Gen 6 heir has chosen a mate.

  3. Aww! You described Adam so perfectly! I'm happy that he and Ali have patched up their differences and have finally settled down. The Bookabet house party sounded so funny and true to life.

    As for Hunter. So funny!! I can just imagine him turning up at the hospital charred to smithereens with a heavily pregnant labouring wife in tow. I wonder what the staff thought? Dylan, from what I saw of him at any rate, is such an adorable kid!!!

    As for MV … As you've mentioned before, you can just say that it is part of the same country that hosts Avalon, just with a warmer climate. Unless you are planning to include all of the seasons? I would recommend Dragon Valley as that is a beautiful and large medieval town. Not to mention that most of the residents there are already elves!

  4. I kind of like all the seasons. I figure MV would be the mainland near Avalon Island and just be more mountainous.

    Dragon Valley looks lovely, but I kind of have this thousand-year history thing going for Avalon, with modern next to ancient. That seems more like a Monte Vista thing. I have Dragon Valley now too, and it looks great, and the residents have great faces even without the ears.

    So many places to play, so little time.

    I'm really glad you liked my treatment of Adam!

    I'm thrilled with how Dylan turned out genetically. Leah's family is a bunch of anime-style Asian sims I downloaded from MTS and elfified, then drew family relationships between, so he had a rich set of genes to draw from. Leah's mother and father are thematically similar but don't share any of the same genes.

  5. I can see why you would want to (/have to) move to another world, but I'm also glad we're going to stay in Avalon for some time. It's a lovely world, with so many unique inhabitants 🙂

    Gina is a cute name, and I can't wait to see her (although I'm not that keen on meeting her as a baby, because every baby looks the same). Finally Hunter has his family.

  6. What an eventful birthday! Now, that Dylan is a teenager he can help out with his smaller siblings, so there’s no need for the babysitter 😉 Anyway they never do what they’re supposed to 😀

    The wedding was nice, shame for the missing screenshots…. Anyway, I was able to imagine everything, because your description is really very good!

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