New Day

Round 5: March 2012 (Spring)

Jeff Reid is 60 and Helen is 58

(Paul Reid is 21, Michael and Michelle Reid and Celeste Dietrich are 19)

next update / last update

Narrated by Helen

Last summer, Jeff had a press conference announcing that the government will start collecting taxes from all citizens early next year. Understandably, the town has been upset and Jeff has been inundated with phone calls and letters expressing their concerns.

There was nothing Jeff could really do about it anyway and luckily things have calmed down since the announcement. Still, I recommended he show a sign of good faith by putting together some kind of function to raise everyone's spirits. I suggested we host a spring festival at the park where there'd be food, drinks and games for everyone.

Jeff loved the idea so I helped him with the planning. It took a couple of weeks to research prices for food, spread the word and plan the structure of the event. We scheduled it for the middle of the month so I didn't have a lot of time to pull everything together.

I met with the restaurant owners in town to ask if they'd cater the function and they were both more than happy to. Belinda Meadows agreed to cater the main dishes and Will Robinson agreed to cater the desserts.

The day of the Festival was a beautiful one, thankfully. I was so pleased to see that everyone from town made it with their families.

There was no formal structure to the day. We just wanted to have everyone in one place to unwind, enjoy some food and each others' company. It was great to see everyone mingling with each other instead of just staying with their close friends and family.

Everyone, no matter their age, was having fun. The kids kept themselves busy catching butterflies and jumping rope.

The teenagers played kicky bag, punch you punch me, had water balloon fights and just hung out by the trees.

The adults and elders kept busy with chess, axe tossing competitions and games of catch.

With Spring comes love and there was lots of it in the air.

I think I even saw Michelle getting friendly with a boy she dated in high school. I don't know if they're still dating or what but I hope Jeff didn't see them together. He wasn't too fond of that boy if I remember correctly.

Everyone complimented the extensive buffet that was provided.

Well, mostly everyone. I guess some of the food wasn't especially child friendly. But it was very good.

All in all, the Festival was a success and everyone appeared to really enjoy themselves. Jeff was pleased with the turnout, too, and is going to suggest that we hold this event every year. He sometimes comes across as cold or insensitive but he really does mean well.

There was only 1 incident where we thought 2 teenage girls were going to fight, but it looked like family members got the situation under control.

For the time being, anyway.

Except for the short time at the Festival, we haven't seen the kids much this year. They're so busy with their studies that they rarely get the opportunity to come back to town to visit us. But they all managed to make time for us this Sunday when we invited them over for an early dinner.

Everything is going well for Michael, Michelle and Celeste at the university. Michael enjoys studying law even though he's just scratching the surface and Michelle is looking forward to being a student teacher later next year.

The only real complaint they had about UCC was the dorms. The rooms are too small and they asked Jeff to talk to some contractors about building new dorms when the town gets the money. They might not benefit from the new dorms by the time they get built but it's definitely something the town council can work on approving.

Paul typically doesn't say much during the family meals but never fails to irritate us with his lack of table manners.

However, it appears that he and Jeff are beginning to come around. Now that we're hitting our golden years, I don't think Jeff wants to miss out on any of his kids' lives so he's been making more of an effort. His and Paul's relationship has been strained ever since Paul was a teenager but they're starting to bond a little more over their great love for music.

Paul has turned around since his first year of college which makes us both proud. He's going to all of his classes and is even trying to get a band together. We're both glad he's finally taking his education more seriously.

After such a great month, it ended on a bad note. Over the past 2 years, we've had an increase in the amount of burglaries in town and while most have been caught, some have gotten away. Jeff's going to talk to the town council about beefing up our police protection. Hopefully with the tax money the government collects next year, they'll be able to start building a police station in town.

Until then, it will be hard to sleep soundly knowing that our neighborhood has become so unsafe.

Notes:
-I think this is the most times my sims have ever been burglarized since I've been playing this game. I don't know why they're being hit so much but it's really going against my whole vision of the hood as being a quiet and safe suburban community.
-I am so pleased with how the Spring Festival turned out. I wanted to get everyone in the town to meet and socialize with each other and that's exactly what happened. I wanted more activities for them to do but couldn't decide on placement and such. But they all kept themselves pretty occupied.
-Lots of stuff happened at the Festival that I didn't talk about because Helen and Jeff wouldn't necessarily know the details but I will definitely touch on them during the appropriate updates ;).
-I've come to hate all of my dorms. Even though I have 3 placed in the hood, I only use one, which I've grown to hate. I'm going to search for some new ones but when I searched in the past, I was never satisfied with them. So I'll probably end up building my own *grumble grumble*. But I feel a little more confident about building after having built my high school.
-I added a Custom Content post to the sidebar. I joined Pinterest after Carla @ Sullivan Sims mentioned it and it's a more visually appealing way of doing a custom content list than I had originally planned. Plus, you can follow others and get all the goodies they download, too lol. It's going to be very dangerous for my downloads folder.
-Oh, and today is my birthday! So I will probably be late in replying to comments. But you all should know that I appreciate any and all comments and will respond when I get back :).