Thanks for the warm TS3 welcome back, everyone! :)
After playing for quite some time yesterday and throughly enjoying myself, I read up to see what I needed to help improve gameplay before I start installing EPs, SPs, etc.
A couple things I did were to make the game use more RAM than defaulted and adjusted my NVidia control panel settings... Wow! I wish I knew about those tips previously because my TS3 game has never played or looked so good for me before!
I also got the previously mentioned nraas mods, found some default skintones and eyes (although, not sure how happy I am with them and might look for others). I’m also thinking that I will install 1 EP and SP each week until I’ve got them all installed.
I also found a thread with steps on the most effective way to install all the Store Content, but I’ll save that for last because it looked really involved and a tad time consuming.