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Ever since Darren turned 13 he’s been girl crazy. His twin sister, Dana, is more interested in playing games than boys, though she does eventually want to fall in love.

 Even if she were thinking about boys, the only ones she kind of likes are much older than her... and already spoken for. Like Joel Rodriguez.

One day, the kids decide to head to Starters-Summit Heights since they have a teens only night every once in a while.

Darren ran into Michelle Reid when they arrived. They’ve been best friends since they were 8 or 9 but now he realizes just how pretty she is.

And he gets really nervous being around her and decides to go play pool instead.

He does wonder if she’s been thinking about boys (mainly him) and about going steady like he has been.

He changed the song on the jukebox to something slow and decided to be brave and ask her to slow dance. Unfortunately, she wasn’t ready to go there with him and turned him down.

He was so embarrassed that as soon as they got home, he headed straight to bed.

Big sister Alicia should be focusing on getting into college but instead, she spends her time checking herself out in the mirror.

She nearly died when she discovered some acne one day and asked her mom if she could stay home from school. Of course Jeanette said no.

Speaking of Jeanette, she either spends all day at her sewing machine or working at her store. She’d been making teddy bear after teddy bear hoping to move onto something more rewarding, like designing new fashions for her boutique.

One day she finally earned her silver badge and couldn’t wait to start working on a new outfit. She finishes it within a month and decides to wear it to the boutique to show it off.

It wasn’t something she normally wears, especially in the winter, but she hoped the younger crowd would like it.

After school, Alicia goes to the boutique to help her mom. She usually works at the register, but most days she gets distracted by all her friends who come in to shop there. Especially her current love interest, Kyle Bryant.

Joel also works at the store, along with his mom, Sofia, and he’s in charge of restocking merchandise.

He’s a great asset to Jeanette because when the store gets really busy, he takes it upon himself to help customers. And he’s a pretty good sales person, too. Jeanette has considered promoting him to manager, but she knows he’ll soon be off to college.

Edna is as playful as she was in her youth.

The family doesn’t know how she gets up every morning at 4 am to get to work at 6 am but she does. She really enjoys working at Tasty Treat and she doesn’t have any desire to retire.

But she does find it harder and harder to get out of bed in the mornings.

Darren has been thinking about earning his own money almost as much as he’s been thinking about girls. So he started looking for jobs in the paper and online.

He’s always been interested in science so he takes a job at one of the only places that would hire him at his age and that’s at UCC’s science center as a Test Subject.

He really enjoys his job and even earned a $500 bonus for choosing the right colored pill during one of his tests. One day a few months ago, he brought home a girl from work named Jessica Whitmoore, and his teenaged hormones kicked in as soon as they got out of the car.

He attempted to compliment her but ended up weirding her out… twice. He’s so embarrassed that he asked her to leave.

He decided to give girls a break for a couple of years and put all his effort on getting a promotion instead. As much as he likes working in the science field, he would like to be in the lab instead of being the test dummy.

He has to work on his cooking skills in order to move up, so he headed to the kitchen to cook his best batch of pop tarts.

Jeanette carefully eyed her portion and when she didn't see anything wrong with it, she dug in.

Darren was so excited with his success that he felt he was ready to move onto making sundaes. Jeanette explained to him that he needed to think bigger than sundaes if he wanted to learn anything about cooking and offered to give him a few cooking tips.

That night, Jeanette surprised her husband with a gift. She was so tired of him wearing his out of style red shirt and worn jeans that she spent months making him a whole new outfit.

He put it on right away and went back out to show her. She couldn’t believe how much sexier his new outfit made him look and she couldn’t stop complimenting and fawning over him the rest of the night.

Once everyone headed to bed, they enjoy a private slow dance.

And headed to bed themselves.

Extra pics:
The 1st Street Boutique got the Best of the Best Award this round and Jeanette has earned over $10,000 working at the shop (she got the memory of earning $10,000 even though I already got all of the money business perks ages ago). I sent the family to a restaurant in Summit Heights that I downloaded but it was nothing special. But I thought this pic of them outside of the place was cute. A congratulatory smooch.

Sims’ faces crack me up when they’re doing the Smustle. 

And I guess teens don’t like seeing their parents making out in the kitchen in the morning.

Notes:
This update felt kind of all over the place for me since the family is so large and so much happened. But I really like this family because they’re so sweet to each other.

The Stevens did have a dog but I decided to put it up for adoption (using Inge’s Teleporter Cat). The dog mostly went ignored since they were all running around doing their own things (mainly playing Mahjong. They love that freaking game and don’t want to do anything else).

I really don’t know why Michelle turned Darren down for that slow dance at the beginning. They’re BFF’s and their short term relationship score is very high too, but it could have been her mood.

That’s Davina at the 1st Street Boutique getting her hair done. I meant to choose one of the townies for the makeover but selected her by accident, so I went ahead and gave her a new ‘do.

Joel seems to be everywhere! He was in the last update, this update and I play his family next.

I just discovered that the Wardrobe Adjuster from InSim changes sims clothes instantly, so hopefully I won’t have anymore shots of sims wearing short sleeves while its snowing. I wish they’d come home from work in their outerwear.

Their ages might seem a little off since I’m “supposed” to be playing a 5 year span (5 sim days = 5 years) but they don’t age 5 years. I started adjusting their ages now and didn’t want to have mid-twenty year olds attending college. I know a fellow blogger was annoyed by that when she switched her aging system and I know I would be too.