@bebasim Thank you :)
I took a two year break from the sims and only started again a little over a year ago. Real life got in the way and then, even after things settled down, it took a while to get back into the game because my life was very different to what it had been.
My son used to like TS2 back when he was small and we were living America but he never really took to TS3 because he had already moved on to other games. He did play for a little while on the laptop he is using now (which used to be mine) when I installed Ambitions and he wanted to blow stuff up ;)
It's true that the simmers help to make the simming experience wonderful. I spent a lot of time on the old TS3 forum and made some wonderful friends back then. Even after the forum closed we kept in touch through Facebook and still do to this day. I started posting on this forum just over a year ago and have made some lovely friends here too :)
It is the hardships that help shape us and what they say about stuff that doesn't break us making us stronger makes sense to me. I hope you get some good quality simming in before the op and, with your positive attitude, I am sure you will do fine :)