a return to the never ending thunderstorm

I've asked this question before, but i saw the answers on my email, and can't find the thread on here so apologies if it's repetitive

I have been playing the Cottage Living.  My family is on a lot in the farming town, (can't always remember the name) and they've been having a thunderstorm for more than 2 seasons.  It started in the beginning of Spring, lasted through Summer and now it's the last days of Fall and the thunderstorm is still raging.  There is no break.  On and on it goes.  The sims have to milk cows in the middle of this, do their gardening, feed chickens, etc in the raging lightening.  One of my characters was killed by lightening.  They've all be struck by lightening and they are all deathly afraid of lightening, etc.  They are always running inside, and sometimes it takes all day - from 9am to 11pm just to get the cows milked because of all the back and forth.  There are toddlers in the house hold who have never been outside or have seen the sun.  They are always sad because of the weather.

It's no longer fun playing this game. In fact, there is a long history of different glitches and issues with loading the game and getting things to work, so to finally be able to get the game fixed and running only to be stuck in a never ending thunderstorm is quite frustrating.  

I already have to make sure I delete ALL cache files in the sims folder or there is NO sound.  That's quite a weird glitch.

Now it's this weird storm that will not go away.

In the emailed answers I saw that someone suggested using the weather machine.  I finally decided to try playing again, and bought the weather machine - so far, I've used it four times to change the weather to clear skies.  I get a notification on the wall that says, the weather has been successfully changed to clear skies.  Meanwhile the heavy rain keeps falling and the thurder keeps thundering and the lightening keeps striking here and there.  

I'm thinking about moving off world as someone suggested, but frankly, the thought of either starting over somewhere else, or trying to successfully move three cows, all the chickens, the money tree (the ONE money tree that gives simolean fruit)  and all the paintings etc is exhausting.  

I wish there were some way to fix this.  I tried using the help desk but the case just gets closed after being thanked for reporting a problem.  No help there.

for the few that answered my earlier question with the suggestions, thank you.  I couldn't lfind the thread to thank you properly on the forum because I can't figure out how to do more than what I've already done....I'm lucky I ended up here to finally type my issues (that took quite a while of lots of clidking here and there, lol)

Any other suggestions?  I will probably end up having to move the family - but I shouldn't have to.  I also shouldn't have to go into the depths of the game files to empty cache files just so I can have working sound on the game either.