A New Start

Cecilia wants two things: a garden she can show off to the village, and with that in hand, to repair her unfortunate love life.

As an explorative type, Cecilia found lots to discover in the Bramblewood, and ended up going on a disastrous date with the hermit groundskeeper, Michael.

Then during a village pie contest, she ran into Tane, a botanist from Sulani, and things just clicked.

He'd moved over from the islands to study garden vegetable growing in Henford.

They were married in an overcast little ceremony in the park near the Bramblewood maze.

Cecilia kept up her hobby for growing showstopping vegetables, but the real money was in freelance programming, which she excelled at, and along with Tane's many promotions in scientific botany they accrued a pile of savings.

Just before winter they decided to swap their cosy original cottage for a more sprawling family style home. Unfortunately they could only just afford this, buying it unfurnished with double digit simoleons to their names. But Cecilia had room for a whole horse, so she rescued a budget filly named Annabeth.

She also got pregnant and started receiving gifts from wild birds.

The winter holidays were rough. They didn't have enough to pay bills on the new house and had their electricity cut off, leaving Cecilia unable to finish programming her current contract and thereby pay said bills. But despite some overambitious management they pulled themselves out of the hole by Winterfest and Father Winter gave them some nice items to sell for more cash to end that nightmare.

They were even able to start buying actual furniture, and had a real dining table for their Winterfest dinner.

Just before the new year, Oliver was born.

With spring came dozens of critters following Cecilia around, giving her gifts... Tane got stung by bees.

Oliver got a little bigger and a lot messier.

Annabeth grew into a whole horse. I think Tane's at the bees again.

Now able to walk, Oliver loved exploring the natural wonder around their home and got scared by a rabbit.

He made friends with Annabeth.

He went paddling unsupervised in the duck pond.

And when his birthday came around, his grandmother Leila came by to see him.

There was no doubt his first trait had to be Animal Enthusiast. He wasn't very enthused by his mother being pregnant again, though.

After way too many trips into space, Tane receieved the honour of being my first sim to grow a UFO fruit and complete the gardening collection.

Thanks Annabeth.