Kyle - Part 2: Family, Friends and New Beginnings

September 2030

Kyle Centowski is 62; Willow Centowski is 60; Jamie Centowski and Meadow Thayer are 24; Harrison is 4; Samantha Bradshaw is 29; Eli Holley is 33; Gavin and April Newson are 33; Austin is 2

(This is long but it seemed like a good way to also update a couple of households who don't have enough pictures for a full post of their own)

It was only a dog, Kyle told himself. It wasn't like he'd lost a family member or something... and yet...

He knew it probably hit harder because Baron had belonged to his father, one more link between them gone from the world. 

But it was more than that. The old dog had been a family member, at least to Kyle. 

Big loss that it was, his passing wasn't unexpected... Baron had been old even when he'd joined the household five years earlier. He'd been an unplanned addition, soon after Kyle's father had died. Willow hadn't been completely happy with the idea, especially as she already had a cat.

But in the end, even that hadn't been a problem.

Like Marie the cat, Willow had eventually, grudgingly, came to accept Baron - despite the fact that he was loud and largely untrained and, at his age, apparently untrainable. 

Kyle's daily walks would be a lot lonelier now.

It hadn't helped that Baron wasn't the only link to his father that Kyle had lost in the past year. It had been a huge shock when their landlord told Kyle and Cory that they were going to have to terminate the lease on the bookstore. The old building no longer met standards and it was going to need major work to make it compliant.

There was no one to blame - the landlord did all the expected maintenance and the shop looked tidy and sound to the untrained eye, but building standards were changed and revised all the time. And the landlord had gone out of his way to help them find a new building to move to.

The new shop was spacious and modern and nothing like the one they were leaving behind.

And, it was a lot better. Even Kyle had to admit that. 

The other building had been fine when they were small and starting out. But the shop was popular now, and it had been cramped and almost unmanageable in the old building during busy times.

It was another link to the past lost, but letting it go wasn't as hard as Kyle had expected it to be. A new beginning might be a good thing after all. Who knows, maybe even his father would have been looking for a bigger building, when their customer numbers grew.

And they kept some traditions alive - Willow was the first customer in the new shop, just as she had been in the old one.

The problems of staffing Kyle's two shops never seemed to end. To be fair, they had been through a period of relative stability for a while, with Cory and Samantha working full time and Kyle's foster daughter Georgia working some weekends and afternoons after school in the Richmond shop, and Gavin and Andrew working in Bluewater Village. 

Things had been uneasy between Samantha and Cory for a while. Their friendship had a complicated history, although they'd done their best to put that aside when they worked together.

It certainly made things easier now that Samantha had Eli.

They had met on the lakeshore one gray afternoon a couple of autumns ago. By all accounts it was love at first sight.

Eli worked as a lifeguard...

... and had a little house by the lake.

By winter, Samantha had moved in with him.

Their first summer together was happy and relaxed

Samantha felt more content than she had in years.

One of the results of this contentment, while joyous for Samantha and Eli, created a major problem for Kyle and the shop.

Cooper Bradshaw Holley was born last November. His parents were delighted and Samantha found she loved being a mother.

She loved it so much so that she had offered her resignation from the shop at the end of her maternity leave. Eli was comfortable financially thanks to an inheritance, and he could support the little family for some time. 

In honesty, she said, she had a feeling she would want to come back to work some day. She just couldn't say when. In the end they had decided that rather than accept her resignation they would give her unpaid leave, at least until she made a decision. 

,

The better part of a year later, Samantha still showed no interest in returning to the shop. Kyle didn't expect that she would for some time now. She had more than just the baby to occupy herself with.

There was a wedding to plan for next summer, too.

Samantha wasn't Kyle's only employee to grow their family over the past few years. Georgia's brother Gavin had also been through some big changes.. Thankfully his situation meant that he wouldn't be leaving his job as manager of the Bluewater Village shop any time in the foreseeable future. Quite the opposite, he was unexpectedly committed to staying there.

Gavin had reconciled with his wife April a couple of years ago, and she had moved into his little rented house in Bluewater Village. 

Kyle figured it wouldn't be long now until Gavin resigned from the shop and moved back to the city. He didn't know how April felt about living in a sleepy little seaside town, but Gavin had made no secret of his ambition to succeed in the business world, and you can't do that from Bluewater Village.

It was a pity - Gavin had been one of the best people to be involved in the bookstores. While little independent shops were closing all over the place and sales of printed books seemed to be in decline, their shops had flourished thanks to his ideas. 

It was Gavin who had got their online shop up and running, something Kyle and Cory wouldn't know where to start with. He'd managed their advertising, and encouraged Kyle to 'lean into' the Victorian feel of Bluewater Village.

They were selling many of the same books as the big chains, but somehow having an old cash register and signs in a decorative font makes your business more appealing, at least to tourists - and Bluewater Village had plenty of them.

Kyle waited with some dread for Gavin's resignation, but it never came. The only announcement they got was that of April's pregnancy.

Baby Austin was born the following spring, and Kyle was still waiting...

... but Gavin and April seemed quite content.

When Gavin indicated one day that he needed to talk to Kyle about something work-related and serious, he thought it was finally time. But to his surprise, Gavin wasn't resigning. Instead, he needed proof of income and of employment in good standing, for his bank. He and April were applying for a mortgage to buy a house on the beach, here in Bluewater Village. 

The place they had found was large, shabby and neglected. Between her savings and some help from her parents, April had the deposit. Their combined incomes would cover the repayments, with enough left over to gradually restore the place.

Kyle couldn't have been more surprised, especially when Gavin shrugged away talk of his past ambitions as if it meant nothing. Bluewater Village was a great place to raise kids, he said.

The house was right on the beach, with views you don't get in the city

It had a good sized yard, and room to grow vegetables. April and Gavin both loved gardening, and if  the soil here was too sandy, that was easily fixed with a few raised beds.

Inside, the house was cosy and comfortable. They redecorated the kitchen first and spent much of their time there as they didn't yet have a usable living room.

There would be plenty of room for a growing family, and this was all the more important now, as Gavin and April were expecting baby number two.

But just when everything seemed settled at the Bluewater store, Andrew had suddenly announced that he was resigning, and they were now searching for a full time employees for both shops. Of course, all this had to happen a few months before Georgia also left for college.

Fortunately they had found someone to work in the Richmond store soon after Georgia left. Kyle's nephew Jamie had graduated from college and wanted to become a writer. He'd heard a lot about the shop from Kyle, and decided he wanted to work there for a while. 

Kyle was only too happy to offer him a job, but Jamie had been unable to find an affordable house in Richmond for his young family.

With the twins off to college Kyle and Willow had plenty of space in their house. Some people might enjoy the calm after years of children and teenagers, but they just found it too quiet. Jamie, Meadow and their son Harrison moved in a few weeks later.

They had wanted a busier, noisier house, and they had got it. Harrison was an active, curious child who never quite seemed to grasp that the whole world wasn't a toy he could play with.

He'd even gotten into trouble in the church at a friend's wedding recently.

On top of that, Meadow was expecting their second baby.

There was a very good chance that Kyle and Willow would be among the first to know that when the baby was coming, and this seemed to bother Jamie's father, Kyle's brother James, a great deal. They were all under strict orders to let James and his wife Marla know the very minute anything happened, and Kyle took this seriously.

"I think he already thinks I'm trying to steal his grandkids," he told Jamie. "As if I don't have enough of my own!"

"How many grandkids do you have?" Jamie asked.

Kyle did a quick mental count, "Fifteen."

"Sixteen," Willow corrected. "If you count Cory's daughter as Rose's stepdaughter."

"Sixteeen," said Kyle. "And... I guess that means one great-grandchild."

"Dad only has ten," said Jamie. "But you can tell him not to worry - we'll catch him up."

Baby Logan arrived on schedule, with the correct notifications made and the grandparents there to meet him soon after he was born. 

Kyle saw a lot more of his brother and sister-in-law, now that they had a baby grandson to visit. It was easier for them to come to Richmond than it was to take the children into the city.

Harrison was delighted to be a big brother

Looking back, so much had changed in the past couple of years, but Kyle was ok with it all. Life moves on and you move with it. That's just the way it is.

One morning that fall, he realized that he was ready to get another dog. And once he'd made the decision, he wanted to act on it immediately. He went to the shelter that afternoon.

It wasn't like he and Willow hadn't already discussed it. They had decided months ago that they would eventually do this. The house just seemed too empty without a dog now. The only thing they hadn't been clear about was the timing, and Willow was happy to leave that to Kyle.

They had talked extensively about what kind of dog they would get, even researching breeds and drawing up a list. It would be another adult, if not an elder, and one that was sociable, well trained and used to being around other animals, and around children. 

The dog that Kyle came home with was none of those things.

Willow was... surprised.

"This is not what we agreed on!"

"I know but...  I was looking at the adult dogs, but this one was kind of trying to hide in the back of his cage... and he kept staring at me and whimpering and, well... maybe its better to make a new beginning with a dog that's nothing like Baron. I mean, if I had another old dog, I'd just compare it to him, and that not really fair on the new dog, right?"

He wasn't wrong, Willow supposed, although she suspected he'd come up with the sensible, logical reasons for getting the puppy some time after he'd actually signed the papers to bring it home.

This reminded her too much of the day she'd come home from work and found that Kyle had agreed to take in Baron, and suddenly they had their first-ever dog. That wasn't something they'd planned on, either.

But in the end, she was so glad it had happened. 

She could only hope that this would turn out as well as Baron's time as part of the family had.

"Well... at least he's a few months old. He'll be a little used to being around people, and he'll be housetrained... wait, he is housetrained, right?"

"Erm..."

"Ok, this is your problem now!"

"But - "

"No, whatever happens, you clean it. This is nothing to do with me."

"But I - "

"No, your dog, your problem," she said firmly. 

As if he realized he was the reason behind the raised voice, the puppy whimpered. "What's his name?" Willow asked.

"Samson."

She looked down at the slightly pathetic looking ball of black fur trying to press himself into Kyle's feet, and she couldn't stop herself from laughing. "Who on earth thought... ?"

"I know, " he said, laughing too. "I need to find something more... fitting."

"Sonny," Willow said, bending down to the pup. "You're Sonny. Welcome to the family."

----

This seems like a lot of babies, but remember this happened over 2-3 sim years in my game!

I am genuinely sad to see that dog gone from the game - partly because I'm writing this in the wake of losing my r/l 19 year old cat so it hits hard, but also because Baron really made himself a part of my hood. More than once I'd see Kyle walking him on a community lot while I was playing another family (that's where all the pictures of Kyle walking the dog come from). He also seems to have found his way into the background of most of the pictures I have of this household. I really notice his absence when I play the house. His rough start in Kyle's household is here.

In game, we moved to the new shop because the remade version of the TS2 one doesn't work in TS3. I've been experimenting with mods that make OFB-type gameplay in TS3 (there are a couple) but none of them worked well in the little shop - too much crowding and not enough room around the counter for sales. 

When I remade Richmond from TS3, I wanted everything as close as possible to the way it was in TS2 - but now, like Kyle, I'm happier to move on. I'm sure I would have eventually changed a lot of things in TS2 anyway. 

Samantha's man is Eli the overly dedicated lifeguard from this post - Samantha was the woman in the kiddie pool. She and Eli really did have love at first sight:

The baby happened autonomously and the engagement and marriage are something they both want, too. So Samantha finally got her happy ending, although I'm using the term 'ending' loosely as in this game, as in real life, you never know where things will go...

Gavin and April got back together via rolling lots of wants for each other. Gavin doesn't seem to care about his career any more and just rolls wants for April, babies, his dog and gardening. So I guess he's happy too.

Meadow has the Surrounded by Family LTW - she wants to raise five children, hence the plan to 'catch up' James with grandchildren numbers. I don't always allow this LTW to fulfill for population control reasons, but I also like playing big families and I'll allow one or two each generation. Jamie also has the Family Orientated want so he's not opposed to more babies, either.

Kyle got a new dog when he rolled the want for one. The puppy (named Samson in-game) was the only one available without aggressive, hyper or similar traits that would never work well in that household. The puppy is shy and loyal, which makes him a bit like his owner, I guess.

The Bluewater bookstore is based on this real life shop, in fact the whole of Bluewater Village in my game is based on Greytown, its Victorian beginnings and its revival as a boutique shopping destination. I even have the drive there from the city in mind, when I talk about the winding, hilly road from Richmond to Bluewater Village