HOLLAND FAMILY CHALLENGE STORY!

Hello there. :) Thank you for being here for my first ever Sims 3 story! 😃 (Circa 2015)

****PLEASE NOTE THAT I HAVE MOVED THIS STORY OVER TO MY BLOG WITH REVISIONS AND HAVE MADE IT TONS BETTER! 😀****
That's where you'll want to go to enjoy it fully!
Read it all here 😉

*And since the migration of this thread to the brand new Sims 3 forums (July 2024) all the pictures to the story don't show up. 😢 Sadly I do not have the time to fix all the images as is this is a VERY long story and it's LOTS of pictures to go through... Sigh... All the more reason to read it on my blog linked above. 😊

Of course you can continue reading here on this thread and make comments, but the story won't be as great as it is now on my blog - especially without pictures. Enjoy either way! Thank you for reading! 💗


If you don't feel like following the link (in the previous post), here is the original story (with the challenge details):

The Single Dad With 5 Kids Challenge
*First you create a Father (not one with the "dislikes children" trait. It's not one of THOSE challenges). And create 5 kids: at least 2 teens, one kid and a toddler. The last one can be whatever you want. For example: I did 2 teens, 2 children and 1 toddler.
To make things easier for me, I created a wife and was going to immediately kill her off right at the beginning of the game. Sounds terrible I know, but it would be fun to have her ghost roaming around their home during the story. ;)
Second: You then move them into an empty lot or a 4 bedroom home (you CAN use Familyfunds to build them a NEW home or update the one you move them into). After that, use the familyfunds cheat again to have only 2,000 in the family bank account. After the funeral expenses the bank account got pretty dried up...
Third: The father has to stay home and raise all 5 kids to adulthood OR until you get your first grandchild.

RULES
Your father can only have a part-time job or he can be self employed
Kids can be home schooled, but can't attend boarding school
Teens can't have jobs! They need to focus on school
NO CHEATS! (Except for Familyfunds in the very beginning)
This challenge is to be set on the Normal Lifespan

So there's the challenge and the rules. I created my family using my favorite sim of all time to be the Father: Michael Holland. :) Glad I saved him to the Sim Bin. Here is his beginning story:
(Which I wrote. 😉 This didn't come with the challenge. It's kind of long but bear with me).

"When Michael Holland met Bronwyn Innaway as a young adult, he was so struck by her beauty that even though he was usually shy with approaching girls, he just HAD to approach her and introduce himself! Little did he know that Bronwyn thought he was pretty cute too, perhaps a little nerdy looking but nonetheless cute and she was actually wondering if he would approach her first.

The two hit it off quickly...which was such a surprise to them both! They never clicked with anyone else this way before. Soon they began to spend more and more time together and were falling in love. During this time, however, Michael learned that while Bronwyn seemed perfect in every way to him...she had an eating disorder that she had been struggling with since her teenage years. Michael always tried to find ways to help her with it and even encouraged her to get some help, which she did. It really seemed to help and her health was beginning to look good. She couldn't thank Michael enough for helping to encourage her.

In no time at all they were married and moved to Twinbrook into a small trailer where they started to begin their new life together. Because of Bronwyn's health and because it had kind of been a dream of his, Michael went to medical school in hopes of becoming a renowned doctor. Helping others is what he's always enjoyed. It was throughout medical school that they raised their first 3 children: Bailey, Derrick and Molly. Through those 8 years Bronwyn still struggled with her anorexia. It seemed that medications and therapy weren't working the way they used to, but she and Michael refused to give up hope and with a lot of help and support from friends and family they were able to keep moving forward with Bronwyn's health in an ok state. After graduating from Med school and entering into his own practice (and buying his family a new home ;) ) Bronwyn shared the news to Michael that she was pregnant again. While he was excited, he was also nervous how the pregnancy would go with her health. Monitoring her carefully, and Bronwyn doing her best to stay nourished so the baby could grow strong, she delivered Andrea a month early.

4 years later with Bronwyn's health going up and down, she surprisingly got pregnant again...a month before she and Michael decided that maybe it would be best to get her tubes tied because of her poor health and how high risk her last pregnancy was. Abortion was out of the question...so both of them were determined to BEAT her eating disorder for the life of their last child! Bronwyn got on a different pregnancy safe antidepressant, went to group psychotherapy, Nutritional counseling and had her health closely monitored as usual by her husband and her OB. For the first time in a while things were really looking up for her, she gained weight to a healthy weight and the baby was thriving. Her, Michael and the kids were very hopeful of their mom's condition.

Their son, Tristan, was born and life was full of excitement. A month after his birth, Bronwyn realized that her more serious than usual baby blues were not going away. She expressed to Michael that she worried she had postpartum depression. After watching her inability to be able to do things lately, he believed her...and began to start feeling depressed himself. What ELSE could go wrong with the love of his life?? This was not what SHE or the rest of their family needed! Bronwyn equally felt the same way, which made her fall even further into her dark pit of depression. She couldn't eat anymore...this time it was more than just the anorexia. While trying to get help and get on an increased dose of meds....nothing was helping poor Bronwyn anymore...

A month after Tristan's 2nd birthday, Michael woke up to go to work one morning and found that his dear sweet love, Bronwyn, had passed away in her sleep. In an instant, his world was turned upside down and his heart broken....the same thing happened with the children. For a long time Michael couldn't work...he had to see a therapist regularly and the kids were falling back in school. Family members helped when they could and after a year of misery, Michael finally felt he was able to work again. But...the demands of the job would not work with him having to take care of his family alone. With a heavy heart, he quit his practice and stayed home to raise the kids for a time until he found a part time job. Money was SO tight and this part-time job was a HUGE decrease in pay. Michael wondered how their family would survive? But he HAD to do what he could. He had to give it his all. And this is where his new life story begins.

What do you think? 🙂

I'm sure some of you have figured this out, but Bronwyn died of starvation. 😔
(Easiest way to cause a death in your sims story...)
I know, it's so sad. 😥 But it helped me come up with a good story for my Father sim and his family. Just sayin'....

Oh and I just want to add that being a depression sufferer myself (after having my child) Mental Illness is a very REAL medical condition and should be treated the same as someone with a chronic physical illness. 👏🏻 I just want to raise awareness to that, not cause an argument.

Anyway, 

Enjoy! And please follow this thread! 😊