This story follows Bodhi and Mei Yang — a young couple who met in college and now live in Sulani, where Bodhi comes from and where his whole family still resides today. Mei comes from a very affluent family that has roots in the Del Sol Valley (aka Los Angeles) premiere neighborhood of the Pinnacles (aka Beverly Hills), so she’s used to a very different life. Will these differences end up breaking them apart? Or will they find the strength they need to push through them?
Episode 1: “A Super Normal Life”
This episode introduces us to the dynamics of Bodhi and Mei, who are the main family we’re focused on. Bodhi makes friends with more animals, which tugs at the deep desire to fill his home with kids and pets. And Mei, who is a non-fiction writer, tries her best to juggle working on her book and managing her two kids… 7 year old Hai and 2 year old Thao.
Episode 2: “A Life of Chaos”
In this episode, we meet Bodhi’s eldest sister, Chantou and her family. Chan is married to Jasper Murphy, who is a retired 4 time Olympian in Surfing (I still cannot believe that we did not get SURFING with Island Living!). They have 4 (count them… FOUR) kids.
Lauren is their first baby which they had almost right after getting married. When she was born, Jasper was still at the top of his game and a very busy professional athlete. So while Chantou was still going to university, she stayed home with little Lauren. Soon, the twins came — Chanel and Ralph. It was at that time that Jasper had a serious injury which he had to work really hard to come back from. In his final run, he placed 5th but he was proud of that because the doctors told him he would never surf again. He then decided to stay home with his kids while his wife built her own career. Somewhere in the middle of all that, they had Andre — unexpectedly.
Jasper has been approached to become an author, writing about his experiences and journey to 2 Olympic Gold medals, 1 Olympic Silver medal, and overcoming a near-paralyzing injury. So he thinks now is his time to focus on building a new path within his career, but Chan is still very much a work-a-holic and isn’t willing to give up all the forward momentum she’s gained in the past almost 3 years in her own career.
How is this going to pan out? Who will budge?
Episode 3: “The Trials & Tribulations of the Single Life”
Bodhi’s twin brother, Chaou — who insists on calling himself the “eldest” brother as he’s 8 minutes older than Bodhi — is a very successful five-star Chef (Michelin Chef) who owns the hottest place in town, the Pier Perfection Restaurant. He has his sights on buying up the local Sand Bar and renovating it to be the second hottest place in town, but to do that he will have to convince the owners to sell it… and they’re going to want a LOT OF SIMOLEANS for it!
On top of that, he wants to meet everyone and date everyone at that…. much to his mother Vihn’s dismay, who would like to see him settle down and work on a family. Although they are very close, this is one point of contention between them. He has a much harder time with his father, Li-em who disapproves of his care-free lifestyle. Li-em worries that his son may get into trouble that he cannot get himself out of — like running two venues, sleeping with everyone (both men and women) in town, and ending up with kids in every corner of the island! He’d embarrass his father’s legacy as the founder of the Conservation society. But that doesn’t stop Chaou…
But we somehow have to host a dinner party at our tiny little apartment when we don’t yet know anyone. Let’s see what mischief we can get into today!
Episode 4: “Seniors Need a Little Love Too”
In this episode we’re focusing on the matriarch and patriarch of the Yang Family, Vihn and Li-em Yang. They also still have their youngest daughter, Lin Yang, living at home after very recently graduating high school.
Lin’s kinda afraid to go off to college, thinking she will be desperately home sick, so she’s kinda lagging behind and not looking into applying to any schools or what scholarships can be helpful to her based on relatively good academics. She has a real passion for video games, but her parents think that’s a fool’s quest as a career! We hear you Lin!!!
Li-em and Vihn have a very spicy marriage. And Li-em just published one of his first books, so he wanted to celebrate. However, the weather was not cooperating. His “hot date” might just turn into a “wet date”…. but maybe that’s a double entendre? Let’s find out!
Episode 5: “Rich People Problems”
Today we play with the other matriarch and patriarch, Ming-Na and Huyang Zhou (yessss I am a huge Star Wars fan so if you are too, you’ll recognize those names!). The tasks we had to get done based on your votes were, Papa Zhou needed to run an inspection (and maintenance) on one of his units & Mama Zhou needed to write a Best Seller book! That’s REALLY hard and proved to be near impossible!
We did manage to get the inspection and maintenance with Huyang but due to just ISSUESSSSSSS…. LOL…. I did not yet complete that best seller! It’s just as hard as trying to get that masterpiece painting (what we tried to do with Vihn), but heck…. I tried. Ohhhh and boy does The Sims really represent what it’s like to have a cat in heat VERY WELL in this game! The meoooowing……… omg!
Let’s see how this all turned out!
Episode 6: “Are You Cheating On Me?”
In this episode, Hai is pissed his wife went to a celebrity party without him, cuz her PR agency was like no, he can’t come cuz it deviates his focus. So they are arguing like crazy about her career (even if my mods weren’t cooperating). We TRIED to go to the active acting career but never got a pop up… we’ll do that one later. And Hai talks with his father about taking over the construction of a new rental project.
FYI — there is a bug report in regards to the overly hypersexuality that is happening with Sims. This also was NOT mod related, I found out and I linked the Bug Report in the description of the video. Also while the bug for Give Food from Inventory might have been fixed, I am not sure LittleMsSam has fixed her mod.
Episode 7: “The Cracks Are Showing”
And we’re back to the main family of this Let’s Play, Bodhi and Mei. Things are starting to change. Mei is having difficulties adjusting to her life on Sulani. She’s been there for a long time now and its starting to get to her. Hai, their son who is 7-8 years old, is old enough to pick up on the instability that is starting to show in their family. Bodhi is happy living there and now the owner of the vet clinic he works on moved in next door — Kadek. And he has a new puppy which is satisfying his need to have pets (and little Hai’s too) without having to further disrupt Mei’s life. He’s trying…. really trying. But its obvious his wife is quite done with Sulani! Bodhi’s soooo tied to the island and his family…. it may be difficult for him to live outside of it.