thanks everyone for the great words. i dont feel so alone, lol. yea, i tried the new generation.. but it wasnt the same. i eventually started a new family, i love them, but not like the first family.

I just lost my first family's dad at age 65 (wow!), and so I sent the mom (63) into retirement and started over with their youngest daughter. She's got a kitchen career like her dad, and she married a redhead to carry on the redheaded trait. Their daughter is a newborn but will have flaming red hair.

She had to turn down two proposals. One was identical to her brother, and one looked just like her father. Creepy!!

I lost my 3rd family's mother while her husband held her hand. That was so sad! I let him stay at home until he was happy again, but then I sent him to retire in Sedona and chose their youngest son. He now has their first grandchild.

I was prepared for the loss since I read this topic, and it definitely helped. Thank you all!

I lost two elderly peeps today...one this morning and the other this evening. One does get used to the fact that they lead excellerated lives. Sigh! I wish the game had half time, because that's what I'd run mine on. That way we could have our little peeps at least a couple of weeks.

One thing I have learned from running so many families is to space out the generations. I couldn't stand it when I would wake up and have so many deaths hit me all at once. On one windows user, I had 3 couples pass away together and one spouse pass away all during the same night. NOT a good way to start the morning. I paused several of them for quite some time, just so I could un-pause them about 12-16 hours apart. So that now, even if there is a death in one family, at least one of the others is going to give me a new birth to be excited about.

Sceenshots are nice and I wish I could frame some and hang them in the house! Or at least put them in an in-game photo album for my lil peeps to look at some time, instead of those magazines!

I also absolutely LOVE the family tree. Sometimes I wish I had more room for notes about some of the things they did that either annoyed me to death or made me giggle. I squeeze in which trophies they earn on my new families now. Wish I had done that all along. It's also nice to notice little things we can pretend are family traits. On one family I selected a next gen female that was identical to her great-great grandmother, the original starting character of my first family. I like seeing that in the family tree and am always watching for that character to pop up again.

:(It was so sad for me when ihad my 4th familiy elders die. It was like so sad. Especially when it was the first adoptee i started with in the 4th familiy. Her hair was red and curly in two bunches. Her husband died earlier this morning, a spiky haired one. Their child is a so called mutation i think. The quite rare 'blue' headed one? I think she dyed her hair. Possibly, does anyone REALLY have blue hair in their genes? I nearly broke down. But 'Decimal(Blue headed girl)' married a some sort of side spiky dark haired man, quite handsome in my opinion.

There's been a lot of genetic topics going on, especially for the rarer hairstyles (Rainbow, mohawk, blue-haired, blue-spiked) and there are families that can have the blue-haired girl as a part of the natural genetics.

Sorry about your loss Sapphire I don't think it ever gets easy to lose them.