Reaching influence with the social groups...

Back in the Bernard family, Julien is quietly studying a few useful skills, like cooking and handiness.

Ginny Bernard, Julien's wife (a former babysitter), changed her lifetime goal. Instead of devoting her time to raising five children, she decides that she actually wants to be a social climber and gain maximum influence across all the social groups.
She hasn't realised how much work it is to keep up your social status while holding down a full-time job in education.

She spends a lot of time at the gym, working on her athletic ability and annoying everyone with her version of the school cheer. It pays off, though. She makes many jock friends this way.

She also hadn't realised beforehand that gaining influence with the rebels would involve her in some very nasty (and smelly) situations.

She also got arrested for tagging a wall somewhere - so she stopped doing that, as an assistant principal you can't really get arrested for creating grafitti!

The nerd group isn't so bad. Not only can she bore on endlessly about her comic book collection to fellow nerds like Bryan, but she can also spend some quality time with her kids playing video games...

And of course there's the time-honoured principle of buying your way in. Gaining social status by sacrificing some of your lifetime happiness points, in this case.

All in all she's doing fairly well. She's at level 9 with everyone, but of course doesn't have a single useful reward yet.

* * *

Gwendoyn Adams is mostly studying to be a rebel. She wants to have street cred (Street Credible is her official lifetime wish). Level 10 street art, and 7 masterpiece murals is what she needs.

* * *

And Leonard Harrel is practicing to become a better magician.

He's getting there. He even has his own "box of danger" now.

It's a dangerous contraption. Let's hope he stays safe!

* * *

Elsewhere in town, Gillian McGovern has a son they name Buddy. She's working on her new lifetime wish to become an Alchemy Artisan, while Trevor has suddenly decided he wants to be a Rockstar.

Constance is still in the fortune teller career, and happy to take care of her nephew.

The Kim twins have also aged up to toddlers.

And David Adams is out and about - checking out the community that he founded so long ago.

Art and science, alchemy and unicorns...

Yue Xiulan Adams is still working on her goal of becoming a 'descendant of DaVinci'. Initially she focused on sculpting and painting.

Except when she goes out skating, of course. (Just because the picture is pretty...)

However, she didn't quite forget about science and inventions.

Meanwhile her father-in-law has used up all his happiness points to get this climatron. He spends a few days wreaking havoc with Winchester's weather, and then grows bored of the new toy, which is now just taking up space in the yard...

Another thing taking up space in the yard is the chickens. And Dexter can't help getting annoyed at one particular fowl: Charles the Evil Chicken. They even get into a fight.

Poor Dexter actually lost!!

Roger Adams went to the prom with Sheila (who is, I think his second cousin once removed).

Shawn found himself a genie in a lamp, but the game crashed and the next time he went into the catacombs, there was no lamp.

So I guess he only "dreamed of a genie"? Groan!!

* * *

Across town the Bernard twins were seen building a snowman.

Tracie Bernard actually started dating Raoul Mendez (her second cousin). 

Yves Bernard is now a world-renowned surgeon, and ready to retire to work on his painting and music - which is really where his heart lies.

* * *

In the meantime the graduation gnomes are stacking up in the Fox household.

Bryan Fox got his third university degree, so he's now officially a Major Master. He's still working in the video games industry, of course.

Bryan and Susannah have two children now: Carlton and Alexandra. Neither of them are blond like their parents.

Carlton looks more like his mother, while Alexandra has some of her father's more noticeable facial features.

* * *

In the Kim household, Huan Chao has decided to take up ghost hunting - his private investigator cases didn't 'stick' and he was tired of not getting proper credit for them. (This is a wish that doesn't work on a rotation. The career would probably work, though - I'll try that later.)

It takes a lot of studying to get anywhere in this career - but maxing out logic does gain you a few levels and some credit with the city council.

He still gets himself into sticky situations!

Meanwhile his wife Bianca travels to Egypt to find herself twenty small animals. She's not going to keep any of them, but she just wants to have the thrill of holding them.

It took a three-day vacation to accomplish this goal. Having a collection helper (on loan from her father-in-law) did help, of course.

After Bianca gets home, she gets pregnant again. This time she has twin girls, Bernadette and Christal.

* * *

Wu Kim is still working on her One Sim Band wish. The recording studio is a good place to practice, even if Angelina Bundy is being creepy.

Maybe they're recording a Halloween song together?

In the meantime Wu's daughter Gillian is working on her alchemy skills.

She gets herself a flying vacuum as one of her lifetime rewards. She zooms around town on it for a while, but eventually decides it looks a bit silly.

She mainly uses her skills to make job booster potions, to help Trevor get ahead in his career.

Trevor doesn't seem to be thrilled with this alternative to hard drugs - but it's undeniable that he wouldn't have gotten far in his career without them. He's incredibly lazy.

* * * 

Timothy Thao is stilly trying to persuade Bella Horse, the local unicorn, to move in with his family.

Bella told him that she'd consider moving in with him if he befriended three pets, so that's what he decides to do. Milo is the third, and it took Timothy a while to even find him when the adoption worker dropped him off...

And sure enough, Bella now deems him 'worthy', and decides to become part of his household. Thus fulfilling both Timothy's wish, and that of his wife Aisha.

So that's another wish off the list.

Gold Diggers and a Heartbreaker

The Lufti sisters are settling in nicely. Once Layla has dated and dumped Pablo, Mena loses no time consoling him... She does let him know she's 'rich' - she knows his first wife died under rather suspicious circumstances, and she knows her money will attract his attention...

Marrying him is easy. Getting him to drown, not so much. No matter how often she thinks 'die, I want to see your ghost' at him, he keeps climbing out of the pool.

So in the end Mena settles for the next best thing - she makes sure Pablo is tired, and then sets off a few fireworks between the doors and the bed when he is sleeping. And then she goes shopping.

Once the neighbours come running in, of course she comes rushing back. She pretends to put out the fire - but she's careful to just aim where Pablo is *not* standing. (The pile of ashes is where Pablo was...)

She sees the ghost as Grim comes to claim him, so her wish was fulfilled straight away - no need to hold a wake over the urn to see whether he shows... As you can see, she was upset at the mess in the bedroom, but didn't really spare another glance for her dead hubby...

One thing she hadn't counted on, though, was her method of making Pablo sleepy backfiring on her - she found out the next day that she was nauseous of 'unknown causes'. (Well, Pablo deserved some fun, and this will give Mena a living reminder of what she's done...)

* * *

In the meantime, Layla decided that she wasn't partied out yet, so she broke up with Michael and went to France to have some fun.

It took her some time to find a non-register, non-married victim after dumping Jules, but in the end she did find one who actually made a move on her... (He babbled something about 'getting to know her better' the moment she showed up on his doorstep. The idiot!)

Her third victim was an elderly gentleman - much to the disgust of Jules, who was still sore about the way she'd treated him...

The wish didn't kick in until number 10 was dumped and heartbroken, but Layla was able to get home feeling she'd accomplished all she'd wanted in her life.

* * *

Meanwhile Michael Adams was nursing his broken heart, and he decided to give up on women and concentrate on rescuing animals instead.

He tried befriending strays, but they tend to come and go and it was impossible to get them to move in, so he ended up adopting six animals from the shelter.

Too bad about that stray cat, I liked it.

* * *

Just a random picture: Daisy Adams does not like it when the mausoleum doors are blocked by snowmen!