As I find customary, I create a new family when an expansion comes out. That way, it helps me find out what there is and it is easier to show you. This time, we are going to meet the Miller family, who will be introduced by their daughter Heather.

Hello, I'm Heather Miller. This is a blog about me and my folks. Where should I begin? Now sounds about right. I might look like a bit of a "Goth" but I could look a lot worse. I'm proud of how I look but I wanted a ring through my nose like mom but they wouldn't let me. I've got a cool necklace, though, plus a ring and a black wristwatch. I think vampires and werewolves are really cool but R2-3PO really gives me the creeps. Dad seems to like robots. I just hope I'm out of here before he gets one. What do I want? I just want to have fun. Don't all teenagers?

As I said, I could look a lot worse. I could look like my mom and dad. You want to hear about their taste in clothes? Listen to that. Silence. They haven't got any.

Dad works as a lab assistant at some R&R place over in SimCity. It doesn't pay too well and a lot of folks have been promoted over his head. He doesn't like that and he's got a grudge against management. Smash the system, dad! However, he's really hooked on logical things and he won't miss a single show of Robot Wars. Apart from that, he has his head in books or he's looking up to the stars through his the telescope that is on the back patio. As I said, he wants a servo to help out around the house. Urgghhh. As regards what he wears? He thinks he looks like William "Montana" Miller, his grandfather, who was a backwoodsman, explorer and pioneer who walked all of the way from Sim Diego to Sim Salvador. Somehow, though, I don't think dad quite has it. He does talk about designing an award-winning game for Simotronic Arts. I'll believe it when I see it.

Mom is a housewife. She doesn't dress as bad as dad, but she shares his taste in hiking boots and backpack. She has been keen on walking and exploring, but there isn't much around Pleasantview. She likes people who smell nice and wear jewelry. However, she has a bit of a grudge against plantsims. Can I say she's Anti-plantsimitic? Whatever. In our last house, we had a good garden. Mom worked very hard, but always lost gardening competitions to households who had a plantsim as part of the family. She felt they had an unfair advantage. She's also got a history of adventure. Her grandfather was a marine who was based in the pacific. Allegedly, he carried the flag that was raised over Iwo Sima. He always talked about his time in the pacific and she remembers his stories. She claims she's going to write about them some day. Yes, I know, I'm a "doubting Thomassina" but I don't think I'll see it come to pass.

That's enough for now. There's plenty more to tell, but you'll have to wait for that. Logging out for now. Bye.

With every expansion, EA add new clothes, hairstyles and other features to creating sims. Bon Voyage is no exception. In fact, there have been quite a few changes to character creation.

The first two steps are unchanged. With Step 3, there are new hats and hairstyles for the men and women. Very few are really suitable for normal living, however.

There are new clothes in Step 5, quite a large proportion of which also would look out of place in a Simerican neighborhood. Here we see Marc and Vivienne, both of whom are wearing outfits best suited to ramblers. Marc is wearing one of the new hats, and also wearing some of the new sunglasses. Vivienne has a new hairstyle, that doesn't look too dissimilar to that previously issued a year ago for Hilary Duff.

Step 4 is where things have a major change. Rings, Bracelets, Necklaces and More is a new category. In other words, Jewelry makes its official arrival to The Sims 2. Sims can wear different jewelry for different occasions, which is a nice realistic touch. On the left, we see Vivienne in formal attire, showing off her earrings and nose stud. On the right, is a male adult showing some of the possibilities for facial piercings that are now available. This explains Heather's disappointment as these choices are not available for teens.

On the left, we see teen ring selection and on the right, we see teen necklace selection. As you can see, the miscellaneous one (three balls) is greyed out, which means the teenagers are prevented from having facial piercings for other than the ear.

Jewelry is a major addition to character creation and I quite like it. Although there are not massive earrings in the choices available, thereby ruling out Pat Butcher recreations, there is a choice to get you going and you can choose for them to be different in each ear. There will be more later on how your existing sims can get jewelry of their own.