Hello everyone! Long time no see! If you remember from my Wonder Child challenge, our wonder child was Lily Sawyer. Pinstar has created several challenges for people to do with their completed wonder child sims and one of them is called the Immigrant Challenge. Now, I've linked to the official rules so that you can read them for yourself!

I decided to have this be narrated by Lily since she took over narration for the wonder child challenge when her parents died I thought it would be fitting.

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Well here I am. A new town in a strange new country.

After I sent the full documentation of my perfect life growing up into the government, they told me they wanted me to move to a town full of zombies to try to clean it up. I of course told them no thank you, but they told me it was in the contract that my parents signed long ago. I guess they never read the fine print.

It was my brother's idea for me to go on the run. I hope nothing bad happened to him, because I'm never going to be able to speak with him again.



This empty lot is going to be home for a while. Maybe I can get a temporary work permit so that I can find a job.



After I spoke with someone in town hall, they informed me that as a temporary citizen I'm not allowed to take a job. Instead, I may run my own retail store. They even said they'd give me a loan of $20000 as long as I paid them back with 10% interest and that once I did that they would give me full citizenship!

What could it hurt? So I said yes and I purchased my own clothing store -- Sawyer Style.

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I didn't build this, I found it on the gallery. But I forgot who built it.



It was amazing how quickly I started getting customers and making money! It wasn't much, but it was something.



The store had a little apartment in the back so that I didn't have to worry about spending my money on a home yet.

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Seriously, having this in the back is definitely the best thing. It's made life so much easier.



Despite the fact that I got a lot of customers, I didn't feel like the clothing store was very successful. So I had a going out of business sale and sold everything in the store, but chose not to restock it.

Then, using those funds I decided to make a fitness shop!



I used to enjoy doing yoga when I was a teenager, so I even bought myself a yoga mat!



I love painting, and my current aspiration is to be a creative visionary, so I spend my time when the shop is closed painting pretty pictures. Unfortunately, I can't sell these so I just use them to decorate the shop.



One day, a really handsome young man came into my shop. We had been getting along great, and the next time I saw him I even got up the courage to kiss him!



I'll admit, I always swore I'd wait until marriage before I shared my first woohoo with a sim, but I had just been so lonely for so long that I decided it was okay to share my first woohoo with Paolo.



Things are going much better with my shop. I'm very glad I made the business decision to change the type of retail store I owned. In fact, I'm a quarter of the way to being able to pay off my loan!



I had hired an employee to assist with the shop, but he kept slacking and so I had to keep reprimanding him. Eventually, I gave him a demotion because he just wouldn't stop. At that point, he attacked me! I couldn't believe it. I fired him immediately after!



Of course, now that I had fired my only employee, I needed someone to fill his place. So I hired Yolanda Murakami. She's very friendly, and even offered to buy one of our outfits so that she could promote the shop by wearing it to work every day.



And she really did wear it every day, even when she got older, which I swear happened over night, she continued to wear this outfit.



Even though I knew I shouldn't spend my funds that I had saved up for paying off my loan, I was making money much too slowly so I decided to have the apartment moved up on top of the store so that the storeroom would have more room for items that I could sell.



Once I bought this $500 punching bag that I began selling for $750 and later $1000 money started flowing in super fast. As soon as I would restock this, another customer would be ready to buy it.



I managed to complete my aspiration while the store was closed one day. And I decided that I was really getting the hang of this business thing, so I wanted to be fabulously wealthy!



I frequently had to come visit my empty lot to pay the bills, but this visit was about something more! I had just left town hall and paid off my loan with interest! After dishing out the $22000, I was left with a measley $742.

However, I asked if at this point it would be acceptable to sell the paintings that I had stored in my inventory while working on my aspiration and they said it would be fine! So, after selling them I had $16,658!



With that money I was able to build a fairly nice house. There's not much in it yet as I spent most of my money on the construction and paint, but it will do.



It was pretty late by the time the construction workers left, and so I spent the evening making some extra money by painting.



As soon as it was morning, I asked Paolo to marry me! I was ecstatic when he said yes!



We then immediately eloped on our front lawn!

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So, I totally forgot that I could earn points by having a gold wedding party, so I kind of screwed myself out of some points, but I was just so excited that she was a full citizen!



After our first woohoo as husband and wife, I had big news for Paolo -- we were going to be parents!



I had a rough pregnancy, I guess because I was getting up there in age, and even though I tried to get out of the shower in time to use the bathroom, I didn't make it and had an accident on the floor. It was totally embarassing, but thankfully Paolo was at work.



As my pregnancy progressed, I got HUGE! I wondered if I would be able to have twins, like my Mom did with me and my brother.



Soon, the time had come for me to give birth to my sweet baby. I was ecstatic, but Paolo was a little panicked.



I had an easy time with labor, and even had time to play Sims Forever before going into labor and delivery.



And just like that, I was a Mom! The delivery was painless, and I couldn't believe I was a Mom.



I was even more excited, of course, that it was twins -- a boy and a girl, just like me and my brother!

Some of the customers at my shop, used to talk about The Walking Dead and said it was a great show and that I should watch it sometime, and it quickly became one of my favorite shows. Since the government in my old country wanted me to take care of the zombie apocalypse and The Walking Dead is about a zombie apocalypse, I thought it would be ironic if I named my babies after that.

I'm pleased to introduce, Daryl and Maggie Sawyer!



While I was upstairs breastfeeding the twins, I heard a commotion downstairs and came down to find that Paolo had started a fire while trying to make grilled cheese.



The twins were pretty fussy most of the time, but Paolo was a very attentive father and always helped me take care of them.





I can't believe how quickly the twins' birthday arrived, they both aged into very good looking children and I couldn't be more proud of them.



I was even more excited that Maggie took after me and was creative.



Unfortunately, Maggie's first day of school didn't go well and she came home and ran upstairs into her room. I found her hiding under her covers in her bed. She said she didn't want to talk about it, and just wanted to be alone for a while. So I gave her some space and made her some cookies to cheer her up.



Paolo said he enjoys working out in the nude when the children and I aren't home. I find this very strange, and I have made a personal vow to never use the weight machine again.



Sometimes when the kids get home from school, Paolo and I are at work, but they're great kids and always go straight inside to do their homework.



Whenever I have a bad day, I like to sit out on our front porch and just relax. It always seems to make the troubles fade away.



Now that I've been in the artist field for so long, I was given a brand new easel from my employer. It's much better than the one I was using before, and I've noticed a huge increase in the quality of my paintings.



Maggie's favorite thing to do is to sculpt things with the modeling clay. I'm always amazed at the different thigs she creates.

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Are anyone elses sims OBSESSED with the modeling clay? It seems like every family I play, if they have they clay they just HAVE to play with it all the time.



Time flies, and soon I'm celebrating my birthday! I can't believe I've gotten so old!

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I'm going to take over narration from here!



Now that Lily is an elder, the challenge is complete! I only scored 51 points, which is pretty disappointing but I still feel accomplished that I've completed the challenge!

+50 for paying off the initial loan plus interest
+1 for 1000 unspent business perk points.



If you're wondering why Daryl and Maggie never finished their childhood aspirations, it's because I wanted to be able to possibly use them for something else later. So after Lily became an elder, I saved them to my gallery and then in CAS made them young adults. You can find them on my gallery page if you search: crimescenetape



Since this challenge was a little tricky, I decided to share a few tips and tricks I learned along the way to hopefully help you guys be more successful than I was!

• I would say the most important thing I learned is that having an apartment of some sort with a kitchen, bathroom, and bed is very helpful.


• Having her keep her paintings in her inventory was also very helpful once she was a full time citizen and was able to sell them.


• I would say that objects similar to the punching bag, or just items that are fun, tend to sell the best. So I would definitely keep that in mind with your shop.


• Even though I hated having to pay the employee's wages, having employees is definitely helpful because if you assign them to answer the customers' questions, it helps get sales faster.


• Use your business rewards carefully. Read through ALL of them before you make a purchase. I didn't do this, and it made things harder on me. I wish I had bought some of the more expensive ones first, such as instant restocking (which I actually never was able to buy.)


• Be patient. This takes a lot of work. I don't think I'll attempt it again, but it was fun and helped me get familiar with business.