Winner

Round 4: January 2011 (Winter)
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Carlos Rodriguez is 46, Sofia is 43 and Angel is 6.

Narrated by Carlos

I've been working at the fire company for a few years, and working there has been pretty good so far.

Most of my days are spent just hanging around the station until there's a call.

There's not much else to do so I usually pass the time by working out or hanging out with the other fire fighters.

With such long hours though, some days really drag on. I don't like just sitting around so sometimes it's a real struggle to stay awake.

But often enough, someone forgets about their TV dinner in the oven and we're called. That’s when I remember how much I love the job. Saving lives and homes is what keeps me coming to work.

On our days off, I often invite some of the other fire fighters over to our place to hang out.

The guys are a lot younger than I am but they seem to enjoy coming over.

But sometimes the 20-ish year age gap is hard to ignore and they either don't get or can't stand my humor.

Work is going great for Sofia, too. The salon is doing very well and with all the money coming in, we've been able to pay off a little of the loan. We have a way to go but at least we're making a dent.

Even though Angel did very well in kindergarten, he's finding first grade a little more challenging. He could barely believe it when he brought home his first report card and discovered he got a C-.

He was so heartbroken and upset about it the whole week. No, a C- isn’t great but it’s still acceptable in our book. As long as he’s not about to fail, he has plenty of time to get his grade up.

So to get him out of his funk, we decided to take him ice skating.

At first we thought it was a bad idea because he was on his butt more than he was on his feet. But he kept getting up and trying again.

After a while, Angel was skating faster and even spinning. It seemed to take his mind off his "bad" grade, which is what we hoped for.

It got his mind off of school a little too much, though, because he asked to go back skating pretty much every day.

I reminded him that if he wants to get that A+, then he'll have to work on that first.

So every day after school, we spent extra time going over his homework.

And he made sure he read the entire book for all of his reading assignments.

The extra work paid off and Angel was able to pull his grade up to a B- by the end of the month! It's not the A+ he wanted, but he has time to work on that.

We're so proud of his effort and I make sure he knows it every day.

Angel tries so hard to be like Joel, who got straight A's all through elementary and high school, but he has plenty of time to strive for that. He too young to put that much pressure on himself.

He is doing better with making friends now, too. A few times this month, at least one of his little classmates gets off the bus with him.

I can tell he still feels shy sometimes when they're not outside playing. He gets so quiet while the other kid yammers away.

But so far, the kids he's been bringing home have been all been nice to him. It's going to be hard for him to get over his shyness but at least he'll have a few friends to help him through it.

Extras:

If I start to assign traits to my sims soon, I will most likely give Sofia the "clumsy" trait. I seem to catch her falling down more than my other sims LOL.

Here are some random snaps I took of Angel and Sofia playing in the snow. I know the next theme at N99 is snow/winter related, so I took these in preparation. Lucky you! You get a sneak peek ;).

I think I love the snowball fight animations LOL.

Notes:
-The fire station is from MTS and I placed it in Summit Heights (downtown). I'm thinking I may move the Rodriguezes again, but to Summit Heights this time since both Sofia and Carlos work there. I can get them a smaller, cheaper place because they could really use the break. When Joel gets out of college, he and Davina will either find a small place for themselves right away or move in with her parents until they can afford something.
-When I first starting playing this house, Angel got a D and that's what the pics of him getting off the bus are of. But then I lost power and it didn't save. When I loaded the house again, he came home with a C- instead, which he was still sad about, so I wrote it in anyway.
-Taking Angel ice skating was not only to satisfy wants but to also figure out the harder harder grades hack lol. Angel's very active and serious and I wasn't sure which skill points he had to build in order to raise his grade. I thought I had to build the body skill but it wasn't working. I read a little more and since his interests are high in paranormal and school, he'll have to focus on logic to raise it, not body like I thought.
-Sofia's salon is now up to rank 4. I think when it gets up to level 5 or 6, I'll let her hire another stylist. So far though, she doesn't get a ton of customers at once, so we'll see.
-Sofia and Carlos must be tired of the snow because they both rolled the want to go on an island vacation. Carlos had the generic "go on vacation" want locked from probably 2 rounds ago but just this session, rolled up the specific one. Hopefully they'll have enough extra money for me to take them in another round or 2.