Hi everyone! It’s me, Stephan Spice! You’re probably wondering where my wife is. She’s just sleeping at the moment (pregnant, y’know), so I get to welcome you back! We left off with Coriander going to college, but we still have Salt, Pepper, Peppermint, Spearmint, Fennel, and Fenugreek here at home, as well as me, Cardamom, Kitty Pryde, and Lord Snugglebottom. Oh, I think Cardamom’s awake now. I’ll let her take over from here.

Aww, I’m so proud of Stephan. His very first (and to be honest, probably last) introduction. He did great, right? Anyway, life continues apace here at the Spice house. I’m in my first trimester, and we have three sets of twins at home. This pregnancy should be the second to last if everything goes according to plans, but then there’s still plenty of time left that’ll be spent raising the kids.

Salt and Pepper are very quick studies, so they finished their skills early. With several days of childhood left, they had complete freedom, and they spend it like this.

Birthday time for the younger sets of twins. First up is Peppermint and Spearmint. Happy birthday, girls!

And here they are. Peppermint, on the left, looks most like her dad, while Spearmint has my eye shape. They’re both lovely, though.

And now it’s time for Fennel and Fenugreek. It’s kind of surprising that, out of 10 children so far, only three of them have been boys.

First, though, I had to drop Fenugreek to pop. Looks like Kitty Pryde plans on picking him up for me, though.

Once we got that sorted out, we dressed Fennel and Fenugreek in matching red outfits. They just look so cute like that! Both of them look a lot like their dad. His genes’ dominance continues! Fennel is a neat, shy, moderately active, playful, and neat little girl. Fenugreek is also neat, shy, moderately active, and nice, but he’s a little on the serious side. They’re very similar in personalities.*

*Fennel: 7/3/6/8/8Fenugreek: 7/1/6/3/10

I tried to remember how to do the slap dance, and, uh, it didn’t go well. I think maybe my belly was in the way. I felt a little awkward, in case you can’t tell from the photo. Luckily Stephan had his back turned in the background there.

“Well, what’s the news today, Lord Snugglebottom? I should never, ever do that again? Okay! . . . Also, I should feed my kids? Whatever do you mean by that?”

Oh, right. That. Eh, they’re technically being fed.

Fennel and Fenugreek are just so cute together in their matching Hawaiian outfits. They make block time look like a fun little luau.

So this happened. I was really pushing myself to get Fennel and Fenugreek’s skills learned, and I just couldn’t quite make it to the bed . . . but there also isn’t much floorspace in the bedroom, so I couldn’t fall down either. The middle part of this raising kids thing seems to be a lot harder than the earlier parts.

After a bit of sleeping standing up, I managed to wake up long enough to crawl into bed. I tried to focus on my needs for a little bit. It definitely wouldn’t help the kids if I kept pushing myself too hard, and I had to provide a good environment for the little ones I was carrying.

Still, we got those skills learned. Fennel and Fenugreek were not neglected.

I noticed a dusty old lamp that someone had left on our porch during the night, and when I rubbed it, a genie popped out! Wow! I totally thought that only happened in stories. He said he would grant me three wishes.

I didn’t need beauty since I’m already married to my dream man, and I already had elixir, but I didn’t have a beautiful beach house like I wanted, so I wished for money three times. We got a huge amount out of those three wishes! I later found out that the lamp was intended for Pepper (why I couldn’t say) so I feel a little bad for using his wishes, but it’s not like he could have really used them much either. At least a new house would benefit the next generation as well as the parts of this generation that got to be raised in it.

Stephan also brought home a $45,000 bonus for selecting the right learning video game for the schools, so we were suddenly awash in cash for the first time ever. You can see another money bag in the kitchen that I hadn’t collected yet. We had some important business to get to before we could move though, like teaching Peppermint and Spearmint how to study.

Meanwhile, Salt had started her own little Salt Fan Club amongst the neighborhood children. They came over after school just to watch her play videogames, and, if they were lucky, challenge her. She was pretty darn good at those games, though.

Aww. I love how sweet my children are. Not a rotten one in the bunch. Whenever they hug on their own, I just have to snap a pic.

Salt and Pepper’s birthdays had come up. They would be the last kids to grow up in this house, and then we would be moving across the street. Happy birthday, Salt and Pepper!

Here they are as teens, continuing the color-coding theme. Salt declared her aspiration to be grilled cheese/romance, and thus she of course wanted to eat 200 sandwiches. Pepper was a fortune/pleasure sim with the desire to be The Law. Both kids grew up very good-looking, but I think Salt is an especially good mix of a little bit of my genes in amongst Stephan’s more dominant facial characteristics.

The kids made the customary college phone calls.

And here they are at college! Salt seems to have lost part of her top at some point on the trip, but otherwise it appears they arrived okay. We’ll see them later.

We left our cabin behind and moved to the large empty beach lot across the street. I was so elated to finally move here, but I was also a little overwhelmed by how much there was to do to build a great house, even though we finally had the money for it, thanks to the genie and Stephan’s bonus.

Luckily, I’m a sim with a benevolent controller, so by the time I blinked, we had an amazing house all built for us. As you can see we even had a car, a fort for the kids, a nice little fountain and a pond, and of course, a beautiful stretch of our very own private beach.

The beach was beautiful and I was in love with our beachy blue house before I even stepped foot inside.

Once inside, though, I was even happier. Upstairs there was a tiny baby nursery, a larger toddler nursery, a children’s room, a playroom/hall, a master bath and a master bedroom.

Downstairs, we had a formal dining room, a beautiful kitchen, a front and back hall, another bathroom, a living room and a study. Everything was done in bright blues that reminded me of the ocean and neutrals that evoked the sand. It was just the house I had been dreaming of.

After taking Peppermint and Spearmint to school, Stephan and I settled into the house by teaching Fennel and Fenugreek some more skills, having a nice lunch together, and checking each other out, of course.

Shortly after our lunch and before the girls got back from school, I went into labor. Luckily Stephan was there to support me.

We had another set of twins, another boy and girl combo.

Apparently I only took one photo of the babies, but it doesn’t really matter because they were exactly identical as babies: brown hair, S4, and dark blue eyes. The boy we named Basil and the girl we named Bay.

I will never get tired of the view from this house.

Kitty Pryde, now an elderly cat, found her way upstairs to the nursery and was promptly accosted by first Fenugreek and then Fennel. She looked rather surprised by their hugs, but seeing as this wasn’t her first encounter with toddlers, I couldn’t say why.

Our first night in the new house was also Fennel and Fenugreek’s birthday. They would get to break in the new kids’ room with their older sisters when they went to bed that night.

And here they are as kids. Cute, right? More than any of my other sets of twins, I think these two look the most alike, at least at this stage. They continued to dress in red Hawaiian clothes, and they looked just as adorable in them as they did when they were toddlers.

That night, once everyone was tucked in, Stephan and I tried for baby one last time. We now had twelve kids and we needed just one more for our goal.

“We will be your three best friends, forever and ever, if only you let us!”

With Salt out of the house, Fennel took over as head of the fan club. The neighborhood kids certainly did like my kids!

Fennel and Fenugreek learned to study from Stephan. I wasn’t around because I was feeling a little under the weather, having been successful at getting pregnant.

Whoops! When we moved in, we kind of forgot that we would eventually need an elder bedroom when one of our kids moved back in with us to continue the legacy. By adding on to the second floor over the back porch, we added in the second adult bedroom, another small bathroom, and more hallway space that was currently empty when this picture was taken.

The extra space upstairs definitely changed the profile of our house, and it made the back porch pretty shady, but it was a necessary addition.

Bay and Basil’s birthday had come around, and all the kids in the house were there to celebrate it.

Here they are: my last set of twins. Basil was very neat, very active, very nice, and quite shy and serious. Bay, on the other hand, was a bit more moderate. She was mostly neat, strongly outgoing, playful, and nice, and a little lazy.* Again, I was struck by how different all of my kids were, except for the fact that they were all quite nice and all but Peppermint were neat.

*Basil: 10/3/8/2/10Bay: 6/8/2/8/8

That night before bed I had my first pop of my last pregnancy. It was the first of several bittersweet moments in this pregnancy. I was a little relieved that we would get to settle down some after we had reached our goal, but I also loved being pregnant, having kids, and raising them so much that I knew I would miss all this. Still, I would have grandchildren to look forward to after this.

The next day’s focus, when the older kids were at school, was on teaching Basil and Bay their skills.

We wanted to paint portraits of each other for posterity, but Stephan didn’t have a very high creativity skill, so he studied up on it and I kept him company while writing about my beautiful new beach house in my diary.

*It doesn’t matter for a still life how high his creativity is, of course, but I hate sims disapproving of older paintings that weren’t painted with high creativity. Even the ones we don’t sell should be masterpieces, imo.

Finally Stephan felt like he had a handle on the art of painting, even if it wasn’t his thing the way it was mine. We posed and then started on portraits of each other.

Vince the headmaster, who was by now a great friend of Stephan’s, came over to get the four older kids into private school. They greeted with a cheek kiss and even made best friends before Vince had even entered the house.

Unsurprisingly, Vince found the new house much more inspiring than the tiny, sparsely decorated cabin. The company and food were excellent as usual, and Peppermint, Spearmint, Fennel, and Fenugreek got into private school.

Lord Snugglebottom liked his new place in the house, where he could see out a window to the beach. He stopped giving generic advice for once just to compliment me on the house.

Last pop! Again, it felt bittersweet.

The kids were all exploring the beach before they headed off to their first day of private school the next morning. They really enjoyed building sand castles and playing out there together. I was so glad we were able to make this move sooner than I thought we would.

I had some spare time, so I decided to put my craftiness to work by building toys for my kids and, hopefully, many generations of their descendants to come. I had to start out making bricks but I had a grand water toy in mind for when I got talented enough.

“What’s that, Lord Snugglebottom? This is my last prengnacy and I should enjoy it? I don’t think you’ve ever been more right, my sweet little womrat! Kisses!”

“Mmmmm . . . babies.”

In my last trimester of pregnancy, dinner conversation was all about the little baby we would soon be adding to the family. The girls all hoped for another sister, but Fenugreek assured us it would be a brother. Stephan and I just smiled. Boy or girl, we knew we would love this baby just as much as all our children.

That night I went into labor for the last time, bemoaning my attraction to Stephan all the while. It would have been impossible to imagine reaching this point from that first check-out interaction from between the ax-throwing targets. We’d come a long way.

Our thirteenth baby was a beautiful little boy. It looks like Fenugreek was right! Still, out of thirteen children, only five were boys.

*Cardamom was actually going to have another set of twins because of her lifetime perk, but I forced a single birth because I wanted 13 for reasons mentioned earlier.

Here he is, our final child: little Chevril.

I was really exhausted from carrying Chevril, so I went to bed and Stephan looked after him for a while before joining me.

Meanwhile, the older kids were doing fine. Fennel and Fenugreek liked to play at the ship dollhouse when they had free time in the mornings before school, and Basil and Bay followed their older siblings’ lead when they were supposed to be learning the mechanical skill. Still, it was so nice to see that my children got along with each other and enjoyed playing together.

One day while the older four and Stephan were out of the house and the younger three were upstairs in the nursery, Kitty Pryde passed away. I was the only one there to witness it. She had been around longer than any of my kids and had been a comfort to me when we were having trouble conceiving at first. Since then, she had been an important part of our lives, and now she was gone. I was really broken up.

When Stephan got home and heard the news, he was really sad too, but he said that we needed to adopt another kitten right away, so that our kids would continue to grow up around animals and to take our minds off the loss of Kitty Pryde. We adopted a grey male kitten.

The little kitten fit in fine right away. We named him Cat in the Hat. He was constantly getting snuggled and tossed in the air, but he still liked to play when he had time by himself.

That night was birthday night for our youngest set of twins. Stephan’s coworker, Samantha, was also there to celebrate with us.

Bay and Basil grew up adorably! Basil was the only one of the kids to need glasses like his daddy, and he even chose the same type of frames. I love birthdays and seeing my kids grow up bit by bit.

Right after that, it was Peppermint and Spearmint’s birthday. Fennel and Fenugreek stuck around to cheer for them, but Basil and Bay had to go up to bed because they were so tired.

Here’s my beautiful twin girls. Spearmint declared a family/popularity aspiration, with the same lifetime want that Stephan and I still had: to have a golden anniversary. Peppermint was family/grilled cheese, and wanted to marry off six kids. I thought it was cute that they both rolled family, and it reminded me of the only other both-girl twins, Saffron and Sage, who both rolled family secondaries. Looks like at least some of my kids appreciated the family lifestyle!

The girls quickly made their calls to the college. The house was rather full, after all. I was still so psyched about the birthdays that I followed them around and was still cheering while they were making their phone calls.

While I was distracted, the very pregnant Samantha tried to crawl into bed with my sleeping husband! You better believe I shooed her out of there quickly. I don’t care if they are best friends forever. That is not cool.

With that emergency taken care of, I can move on to the girls at college. I think they look beautiful. Except for her nose, Spearmint looks a lot like me, and Peppermint continues to look like Sage the most.

And that, dear friends, is how I wound up with eight kids in one dorm. The other five still at home with me would have to get into another dorm when they got old enough. I’m glad that sim time can be kind of strange, because it meant my kids could be together and get to know each other as adults some.

Back at home, Stephan and I had finished our portraits of each other. I think they turned out really great, if I do say so myself.

Basil had a strong affinity for studying, and he seemed not to get as tired while he was doing it. Long after Fennel, Fenugreek, and Bay had gone to bed, Basil was still up studying, getting quite the head start on his twin.

We’ve reached the end of another chapter, dear readers. Stephan and I still have five kids to raise, and we have our golden anniversary to look forward to in the near future. Check back in next time to see how that all goes. Thanks for reading!