Around the Homestead

Noah finally got that piano that RealNoah wanted. I can't tell if it's a concert grand or a baby grand, but it's a piano, okay? Currently he's up to Piano skill level 4 and can play a lovely rendition of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star."

Later, I bought him an electric guitar so he could switch it up a bit with the instruments. I finally got to work on David, his evil eyebrows, and his rather silly wardrobe.

While Helena inherited Noah's brown eyes, and David inherited Zelda's deep, blackish-green eyes, they both got their eye shape from Zelda. I do like that David has the exact same hairstyle as his father, though.

Okay, so the outfit's not that bad. I'm just not a fan of white jeans.

I pretended that Noah bought David a T-shirt as a souvenir.

I don't know if there's a glitch in the game or what, but Zelda and Noah basically never sleep. Seriously, their energy bars never, ever diminish. Therefore, Noah has been playing the piano for two days straight - except for when he's at work as a blogger, of course - and Zelda has upgraded almost everything on the first floor. Here, she gives the bathroom sink a "Self-Cleaning" upgrade while Helena and David work on homework.

The final appliance to get an upgrade was the stove. I don't think she's finished with it yet.

Hit it! Hit it harder!

Hiiii-yah!

Since Helena had absolutely nothing that she needed to do, really, in China, she checked the Adventure Board and headed out to have some fun. Her first assignment was to find a relic in a tomb. When she got down into the heart of the tomb, she found a kick-ass electric trap. All she had to do was push a statue onto it to disarm it, but it was still cool.

Meanwhile, Noah put off buying a camera and headed out to a training facility to try his hand at the martial arts. He, uh, wasn't very good.

Hehehehe!

He stayed there for a long time, learning the ways of the force, or whatever, until he went up a skill level and earned his white belt, of which he was very proud.

He pretty much stayed there all day. At one point he wandered out and bought a camera, but that was about it. He took some pictures of things like a chair and a bookcase, and then got a call inviting him to spar with a master named Xi Luan. He went over to the Luan house, but I got confused. I thought this guy was Xi Luan:

But my error was quickly apparent when dude changed into a white dojo like Noah's. Clearly not a "master". Oops. The good news is that Noah beat him, though! Yay!

Meanwhile Helena had found that relic thing or whatever, and was now sent to the dragon cave to thoroughly explore it.

It looked really damn cool at night.

She managed to get all the way through the cave, but then she was tired, so she set up camp.

The next day, Noah, apparently supremely indifferent to the fact that his teenaged daughter never made it back to camp the previous night, went to the local market to challenge the real martial arts master. The guy he fought last night? That was her husband. This is the real master, Xi Luan:

They fought twice. Xi kicked his pansy butt both times. Still, at the end of it all, he had worked up to being a yellow belt. He was, once again, immensely proud.

Helena, having checked in with her adventure handler, was sent off to collect some kind of metal and lapis lazuli to complete some kind of statue? That will help a foreigner fight...somebody? I don't know, I didn't pay attention. During her jaunt to search for the precious rocks and metals, Helena stopped, Disney-princess-like, to sing herself a song.

Gah! It's quick-grass, and it's got her foot!

Noah went back to the gym to work on his martial arts skills some more. He went to the boards to practice breaking them.

It is worth noting that Noah is trying to break a foam board, here.

*snerk*

Off to Fra...oops! China

Noah and Helena had opportunities to complete in France. Noah was supposed to go to France, buy a camera, and take pictures of things. Helena was supposed to go to France and interview someone for a school report. I set up the trip and clicked okay, without changing the destination. So instead of Champs de Sims, they ended up in Shang Simla.

Oops.

Base Camp

It should also be noted that Helena and Noah, ridiculous bookworms that they are, kept trying to pull out books to read while they were doing things like climbing to the top of the Temple of Heaven, and trying to find relics in tombs.

Furthermore, the first thing that Noah did on arrival was climb all of those stairs into his base camp, in order to do this:

Ha!

What's Up with the Bergmans?

When I switched households, Noah and Zelda were out at that ritzy lounge club. It was after hours. What the heck were they doing there? They couldn't get drinks or dance or anything. Oh, well. I guess we should take advantage of the elevator when it's there.

The next day, Zelda re-examined her priorities in life. All her life, she's wanted to be a rock star. Unfortunately, she rather stupidly took the wrong track in the music career and is in the symphonic branch instead of electric rock. So, using almost all of her lifetime happiness points, she chose a new lifetime wish and retired from the orchestra. She seemed pretty pleased with the decision.

Her new wish is to be a tinkerer, so she whipped out her hammer and went to work on the family's microwave.

Finally, I looked over Helena and David. They're doing well, and David is romantically involved with Elizabeth Kelly, daughter of Joe and Erin. I desperately need to do something about David's eyebrows and wardrobe, but I worked on Helena first. You might remember that she inherited her mother's blonde hair with black roots.

Is it just me, or is this young lady quite stunningly gorgeous?

I didn't think blonde was her best color, so she went back to her true hair color.

Ugh, what is with this outfit?

There, that's better.

Next up: RealErin is too much of an idiot to play World Adventures correctly, but has a good time anyway.

A Child with Two Mommies

Determined to have at least one child, Holly phoned the adoption service. Oddly enough, the service worker wasn't put off by Holly wandering around in her underwear and immediately agreed to allow her to adopt the child.

Holly hugs John, her new son.

Holly and John play tag.

A Night Out

When Holly and Joann got back, the fire engine was still there! But the firefighter left shortly afterwards. Thank heaven! She was getting annoying.

Holly decided that her trip to Egypt needed to be memorialized. She headed out to the salon to get a tattoo from the fetching Darlene Bunch.

Holly sat in the chair and Darlene immediately fired up her tattoo needle gun thing. She started buzzing away on Holly's arm even though Holly hadn't decided on a pattern, color, or even placement of the darn thing. Oh, Sims. You're so silly.

Meanwhile, Holly thought about sandwiches.

After Darlene had been playing around with the needle thing for about six hundred hours, the Create-A-Sim screen finally popped up and I finally got to pick out Holly's tattoo.

She settled for a pretty little circle thingy in the middle of her lower back. Amusingly, when the game cut back to Darlene making the tattoo, she was still buzzing away on Holly's arm despite the lower-back placement of the tattoo.

The next night, Holly and Joann decided to head out for some after-hours entertainment. They headed straight for the ritziest lounge bar in town.

They stopped for a quick romp in the elevator, but then inexplicably the club closed and they had to go home. At least they had fun, right?

Joann headed out earlier the next night, while Holly was still at work. The lounge looks incredible, but when Joann tried to actually get in, the bouncer stopped her.

Apparently, poor Joann isn't enough of a celebrity to get into such a classy place. (But Joe is!)

Meanwhile, Holly ate a salad and mulled over her sudden desire to have a child.

Back at the lounge, Joann had finally resorted to bribing the bouncer.

But then the bar closed and she had to leave. Rats!

Attack of the Mummy!

On her third day in Egypt, Holly woke up and discovered some ladybugs crawling around near her tent. She caught a few and decided to start a collection. Personally, if I'd ever seen ladybugs that huge, I would have run away crying.

Holly wanted to explore a tomb, so she started poking around. She saw lots of sarcophagi and decided that she just had to look inside. Unfortunately, she woke up some grumpy locals.

In Sim world, mummies are pretty dangerous. Fighting with one can knock you out cold, and if you're really unlucky they'll put a curse on you. The curse can kill, so most sane Sims try to stay away from mummies if at all possible. Not Holly, though. Still in her bikini from diving and swimming through wells and tunnels, Holly decided that she wanted to fight and defeat a mummy. Whatever you say, sweetheart.

The two mummies advanced on her as she imagined what a lovely picture they'd make if only she had her easel handy. The thinner mummy walked up to her and attacked.

The mummy leaped on her, placed her in a headlock, and just generally kicked her ass.

Exhausted from her fight, Holly passed out on the floor while the mummies wandered off to roam and growl some more. Holly spent the rest of the night there and didn't move until she was magically transported back to Sunset Valley.

The Tour of Egypt

Egypt: Basecamp

Holly and Joann check out adventures on the sparkly Adventure Board.

Now, aside from the adventures she would take part in thanks to the Adventure Board, Joann also had another objective: her primary one, in fact. That objective is to jog for four hours in Egypt. This will gain her money and an increase in Athletic skill for some reason.

The Sims get these little "Opportunities" now and then: they have to read a certain book, grow a certain plant, find a certain object, learn a certain recipe or piece of music, etc. Sometimes these opportunities result only in cash prizes, but sometimes you get an increase in a related skill, or something really, really cool like the ability to grow a steak plant.

The Sims 3 World Adventures updated the game with a handy little Adventure tracker that keeps track of whatever it is that you need to do to finish your opportunity or adventure. It's much more convenient than searching the town map for the gold Opportunity/Adventure star, and less stressful for those with bad memories (like me) who will often forget that they even opted into an opportunity and then feel an unreasonable sense of shame and failure when the opportunity goes unfulfilled and they hear the sad "You foolish and lazy person, you didn't fulfill even this simple task!" music.

A-hem. Anyway.

Both the adventures were LAME. Joann got the exact same "Find these papers for MorcuCorp" assignment that Candy had when she and Marion came on this little jaunt. At first I wasn't sure, so I followed her to the tomb and took a picture:

Things got even lamer when I realized that, since this is basically one game, all the things that Candy fixed - hidden stairs, pushing around statues, etc - had remained fixed, so Joann didn't have to do anything. And yet, the papers were still in this completely accessible room.

Holly just had to go to every single tourist spot in the city which took forever because things are super far apart and she can't drive everywhere because they're in a desert for Pete's sake. But at least she got some pretty pictures.

The Great Pyramid

The Sphinx

Ruins

Temple

Meanwhile, something actually exciting happened - Joann had a wish to sleep in a pyramid, so she went to one of the big pyramids, where she was hunting for turquoise to give to MorcuCorp, and opened the pyramid's door!

Unfortunately, her tent wouldn't fit in the pyramid, so she had to sleep outside.