adventure honeymoon (gameplay/picspam)

December 2087. Tyler Jackson is 24, Maya is 26.

previously: the cavern of love

Tyler and Maya eloped about eight months ago. But Tyler needed to focus through the summer on his training certification and the family’s new adventure theme park, so they’re only just now getting away for their much anticipated winter honeymoon. An adventure honeymoon for a very adventurous couple! They couldn't have asked for a better location!

Their rental is very cozy.

First night, barely unpacked, they headed straight for the slopes. They haven't done this in a while, but how hard could it be? 

gameplay notes: So, to be honest, after the first day, I cheated them both a little bit of extra skill. This is a new pack, so of course they both started out with zero skills. But they’re both so sporty and active, it didn’t make sense that they’d be so bad at this. Storywise, it wouldn’t even make sense that neither of them had touched a ski slope in either of their 20-something years of life. However, skiing didn’t exist in Tyler’s TS2 childhood, and Maya came to us as a character at about age 22. But from here on out, we’ll imagine that they were just a little rusty and got back into the swing of things. 

Those failure animations, though! I couldn't stop taking pictures, lol!

Upgrade! New skills, new gear, newly energized spirit!

Maya’s favorite outdoor sport is rock climbing. She’s naturally focused most of the time from her genius trait, so this suits her really well. 

Meanwhile, Tyler decided to focus on skiing. To start, at least. He'll need to skill up in rock climbing, too, eventually, because he promised Maya they would summit that mountain together some day!

He had more wipe-outs than he hoped for. Tyler is not as naturally gifted at his favorite sport as Maya is at hers. Considering his active trait and often energized mood, perhaps he should have tackled snowboarding instead. But he is determined to excel at this anyway. 

Back to their warm, cozy rental. A long day of strenuous activity followed by a long night of slow and sensual activity. 

Honeymooners gotta honeymoon, however, neither had the energy for banging headboards tonight. 

To share the vacation, the rental, and the expense, I sent another couple along on Tyler and Maya's honeymoon vacation. Here are Mayumi and Nobuo Akiyama, Blossom and Vale's parents.

The property is nicely divided into two private bedroom areas, so it wasn't like they were crashing Tyler and Maya's honeymoon.

Headcanon backstory goes that Mayumi was born in Japan, and met Nobuo while attending college in the US. Then they got married, settled in Wisconsin, and had Blossom and Vale. Neither of them are into the extreme winter sports, but I wanted to explore some of the more cultural aspects of the pack with them, hoping to pick up some gameplay that they can bring home to share with their family. Unfortunately, they missed any of the festivals while they were there.

Ah well, that'll give me more reason to have them come back again with grandbaby Abe (and any other grandbabies that happen to come along) in a couple more years.

Then, a little further down the road, I think they might like to retire in Mt. Komorebi. But for now, Nobuo is my only veterinarian. Although my game doesn't give two craps about where he lives, I can't stretch my head around him living in Japan and commuting to work in Wisconsin, lol!

It wasn't anyone's intention that Mayumi would be the chef for the duration of the trip. But she enjoys cooking and she was always awake before everyone else. Given this town's severe lack of restaurants and takeout eateries (new pack, no cross-over EP lots...) they were all blessed to have a skilled chef along for the trip. Warm soup from the vending machine was getting very old. 

Tyler and Maya tried their best to repay the favor one evening. 

It was no culinary masterpiece. But the meal was edible, at least. 

A few random moments to round out the trip, then it's back home to furbaby, Gracie. 

If there's one takeaway from this adventure, it's probably that Maya has a few more mountains to climb before she gets herself pregnant. She had twenty-seven in mind as a good age to embark upon motherhood. But that's coming up so fast, and she'd like to embark upon the summit of Mt. Komorebi first. There will be time for babies later.

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notes: a very gameplay-oriented post, for a change. Especially since their honeymoon served as my first playthrough for the Snowy Escape pack. But it was still their honeymoon and an important part of their lives and story. So here it is. 

I did a similar thing for Dallas & Lucy's honeymoon when Island Living came out, but I always feel sad that their pictures were only posted on Tumblr. Those Tumblr blogs are so hard to navigate. It feels so lost over there, like it's not properly part of their life story. So maybe for their 1-year anniversary, I'll bring those pictures over here. We'll pretend the vacation photos got lost for a while, lol!