A quick photo album of the children:  Eve, Adah, and Adam.  Where the white hair came from I can only guess. I liked it so kept it.

Candy was so happy that she had adopted the puppies.  She got so much joy from them.  Now she had 3 things in life that made life worth living, her garden, Zillah, and the puppies, Penny and Dakota.  Even the extra work wasn’t enough to make her unhappy.

Eve loved to entertain Zillah and life was progressing at a steady clip.

Candy spent the majority of her time in an alcoholic haze of unhappiness and anger.  That mean streak that served her well with her dad was not much help when dealing with her children, though.  The fact that her house seemed to be cursed didn’t help matters, either.  You know how they say that your house absorbs your energy?  Yeah, Candy’s house had an air of meanness to it, and that affected all of the children, as well.  And the earthquakes were just too much!  Candy felt like she lived under an unlucky star.

Before Candy knew it, Eve was starting high school.

Where did the time go?  Since Eve and Zillah shared a birthday, Zillah was now old enough to start grade school, too.

Eve decided that she wanted to be a Master Actress and Candy laughed at her.

“You’re just white trash from the wrong side of the tracks.  You will never escape this life.  I tried and I failed.  What makes you think you can get out?”

Eve yelled back at her, “I’m smarter than you could ever be!  I will be famous and rich one day, and I WON’T SHARE ANY OF THE MONEY WITH YOU, YOU BITCH!”

Candy slapped Eve across the face and told her to get out!  Nasir stepped in and did what he could to calm tempers.  He told Candy that Eve was not leaving this house until she was finished with High School.  None of the kids would leave until they graduated! Candy locked herself in the bathroom and refused to come out until Eve was out of the main living room.  Eve flounced to her room and holed up there until her mother calmed down. This took over a week.  Eve tiptoed around her mother for the entire week.  She met a lady in the entertainment field named Baby Ariel and made plans to go live with her once she graduated. Ariel was very understanding and told her that she could come anytime she felt she needed to leave.  This escape was exactly what Eve needed to stay the course and continue living in her childhood home.  She spent a lot of time in the nursery dancing with her dad and Adah.

The dogs had more freedom than any of the kids did.  They slept like the dead most days.

And ate cake that the kids left down for them.

Everyone but Candy enjoyed the stereo on a regular.  Even the dogs hung out in the nursery.

Candy came home one day and Dakota was sick.  Whereas the kids had to fight their own illness in their own way, Candy wasn’t about to let the dogs be sick, so she took Dakota straight to the vet office.

She found her calmness during her evening jogs with the pups.

Adah came home one day so exhausted that she couldn’t make it to her bed.  It is her birthday but she will have to take a nap before she can blow out her candles.

This puts another teen in the house.  Adah inherited her dad’s not-so-secret trait.  This shall be fun.  All of the kids are having some issues with bed time.  Candy doesn’t make the kids do anything, except homework every once in a while.

Surprisingly, Eve becomes an A student.  I guess her claim to be smarter than Candy was accurate.  And Zillah tends to nap in the tub a lot.  Because she is not “passed out” on the floor, I let her do it.

The dogs, OMG, the dogs.  Penny is constantly finding a mess to roll around in and though she is a white dog, she doesn’t look like it.

And Dakota is very aggressive and likes to attack anyone that comes a-calling.  Good doggie!

The bees do their part to protect the homestead, as well.  Even from the residents!

Candy came home one day to another mess and no dinner made.  She walks in the door and tries to find a reason to be there.  She realizes they don’t really need her except to pay the bills.  She has been slaving away in a hot kitchen all day to come home to slave over another oven.  From out of nowhere, Candy picks up the phone and calls the man from the bar.  She was no longer interested in his money, but where he got it from.  She goes out into her garden and sits among the flowers while she talks to him.  He said that if she really wanted money, he could help her earn it.  But she would have to leave her morals and ethics behind her.  She laughed.  Big belly laugh that caused her to fall over on her side.  It was edged with hysteria.  She told him that she had no morals because she had been paying her rent with her body for the past 18 years.  And ethics meant nothing to her.  She didn’t even know what that meant.  That night, Candy entered a different career, one that would either make her or break her.  And for once in her life, she felt like she was doing something that would make HER happy.

And then Adam had a birthday and he was starting High School.

But who really cares?  The dog is sick!  Back to the vet!  If he hadn’t run away, he might not have been sick, but Candy didn’t care, he just had to get better!

Candy wasn’t even talking to Nasir anymore unless she was playing a practical joke on him, and she really didn’t care that he had decided to run around naked all day, every day.

And she really didn’t care that Eve refused to shower.  That was her problem.

Harvestfest came around and Candy did what was expected of her.  She had a secret that she loved having and knew that she would leave her family this evening and make others just as unhappy as she had been for the longest.  But while the holiday was active, she made a Grand Breakfast and appeased the gnomes that had all shown up.  After the festivities, she went to work and earned a place in the criminal world that made her feel at home. (That’s Malcolm Landgraab that joined them for Harvestfest.)