Prosperity Challenge - 5 (Days/Years 13-15)
Winterfell is back! Real life is getting in the way of my simming. In fact, I probably shouldn't even be doing this right now. But anyway!
Burkett
Leone had to admit that Lou had been a good companion for many years now. He never demanded anything from her, and seemed to understand that she would never be ready for an official commitment. She'd had her dalliances, but it seemed to her that they'd acted like an official couple for quite some time, even without ever discussing the relationship. It was with all this in mind that she invited Lou to the park. She wanted to give him something nice, to demonstrate that she did care and always had.
She was very glad she'd told him, in the end.
Lou would be ok. And Alvin...it was harder to think of Alvin. Alvin and Van would have each other.
She couldn't say she was glad to go, but she couldn't deny that she'd had her fair share. There was bound to be something interesting on the other side.
She was ready. But if she'd known what would happen after...
Alvin knew one thing. No one was ever leaving him again.
(Backstory for the new reader as this doesn't stand alone very well: Leone and Van were brother and sister. When they moved to Winterfell, they adopted Alvin as a child. They died the same day, leaving Alvin an orphan...again.)
Koepple
Raising teenagers was definitely no picnic. The littlest thing would set them off. Marilyn was pretty sure she hadn't changed much, but in the girls' eyes it seemed she had transformed into an embarrassing social disgrace, as ignorant as she was ridiculous.
She tried not to take it too personally, and there was something a little funny about a girl you had personally toilet trained acting superior to you. It still stung a bit, though.
She thought it was time Rochell got "the talk". She'd noticed boys starting to sniff around the house, and her youngest granddaughter was getting her fair share of the attention.
When she tried, though, Rochell was angry.
"Grandma, I am SO not the one who needs to be hearing about this stuff." When pressed for details, she stayed quiet.
(Marilyn probably couldn't even have imagined the truth. Sweet little Eli Haynes? And Anabel - the girl so in her own world she still played with dolls?)
At least having Ian around ensured someone was always on her team. When she heard the news of Van's death, she mourned, but also felt somewhat vindicated in her decision to marry Ian. He was going to be around for a good long time, and the money he brought in was enough to really help out. Not to mention he made her feel about thirty years younger!
Thigpen
The neighbors were starting to talk. Things were a little strange around the Thigpen house. First, Lise had obviously cracked under the stress as she strove to get ahead in her medical career.
Their garbage was always being turned over by a string of people Glen had pissed off.
Everyone in town seemed to have it out for him these days. He brazenly tried to cheat on Lise, but he wasn't getting any takers. It seemed no one ever told him that a successful "bad boy" needed to at least be charming.
Finally, everyone knew Marguerite Thigpen was dead, but she kept being half-spotted out of the corner of your eye at night.
Inside the Thigpen house, things weren't much more normal.
Shena really wished her mother and her new aunt Gwen would keep their clothes on around the house. It was so embarrassing.
And Shena was not easily embarrassed!
Gwen's bouts of nausea soon showed themselves for what they really were...
Winterfell's very first pregnancy! Pregnancy was not kind to Gwen.
The absent-minded fires...
The accidents in the living room...
Not to mention the terrifying resident ghost, who scared the pregnant lady almost to literal death several times.
But Gwen was still pretty sure that Emanuel was worth it.
Haynes
Being a teenager was like riding a rollercoaster, and Eli often wished he could get off. At first he knew he was in love with Shena Thigpen.
She was the coolest chick in Winterfell, she was starting a punk rock band, and she was older. What more could he ask for?
But she was attached at the hip to Nevada Koepple, and Nevada wouldn't give him the time of day.
She actually snorted when Eli suggested that he could learn the drums and join Xi Centauri (the working band name). When Shena didn't stick up for him, Eli was crushed.
But all that seemed so far away, after the fateful day that Anabel Koepple called him up and propositioned him on the spot. Ever since, he thought only of her - and her double bed.
He'd been stunned when she rejected his request to go steady. She gave no explanation.
Eli moped for a week. She wouldn't even return his calls after that. He threw himself into giving makeovers with Lou.
It had seemed to help Lou's broken heart after Leone died.
And Willow was awfully cute.
College
Ria Koepple and Bob Thigpen's last two years of college went by surprisingly quickly.
What Ria had planned to be a simple booty call with Amar turned out to be much more.
He was the only thing she ever found that distracted her from her studies - so she decided it was fate and proposed.
In her free time, she did a lot of painting.
She got pretty darn good at it.
But her favorite activity had to be completing her term papers. There was just nothing that felt better.
Well...almost nothing.
Bob, in his turn, was finally having some success with the opposite sex. Melanie the cheerleader happened to be the first to respond.
Unlike Ria, Bob never developed meaningful feelings for Melanie. Whether Melanie was aware of this or not wasn't clear.
Yes, Bob was somewhat in danger of following in his father Glen's footsteps.
In the end, Bob asked Melanie to join the Greek House, to carry it on until more worthy members could be found. She moved in the day Bob and Ria graduated and moved out.
(Doo doo doo pay no attention to those phone books.) Their days of toga parties and constant free pizza ended, Bob and Ria returned to Winterfell - Bob back to his family's house, and Ria into her own little place she planned to soon share with Amar.
NOTES:
This will probably be the last update I do that's one big one for the whole neighborhood. They take forever! I'll try to set up a tag system or something, so that if you're only really interested in one or two of these families or something you can just read their updates.
ACR is pretty good at shaking things up. Anabel really did booty call Eli out of the clear blue sky (I don't believe they'd ever even flirted prior to that). I couldn't believe Leone and Van died the same day. Poor, poor Alvin. Marguerite's ghost is a menace and I believe I'll be starting Winterfell's graveyard shortly. And yes, I'm using the College Adjuster, but only after I get their grade bars up! Hardly cheating at all, really. :)