Thanks Kuronue, but that doesn't explain why it happens ONLY after a vacation.  I mean, I have changed hair, clothes, etc. several times with no problems, and thanks to the date that it happened, I can limit the candidates down to about three files other than awesome mod that I installed the same day, give or take 48 hours.  I uninstalled that content, reloaded the game with the error, and the error persisted. So I believe I can rule that out.

To be honest, if the problem always happened when using a particular hair or loading a particular lot, or wearing particular  clothes, I believe I can recognize the problem. But the pattern is, the night after a vacation. I don't believe a hair problem can cause it to crash only when returning from vacation, can it? Wouldn't it be more likely to cause it when I try to use the hair file, or the enter a corrupted lot or put on some corrupted clothes. I don't think the pattern would be the night after returning from a trip, it would be a different pattern altogether, right?

My game crashes to the desktop on the night after they return from vacation.  It is a fixed time around 3 - 4 am game time, and happens like clockwork.  My sims go on a vacation, everything is fine, they return, they carry on with their lives and sometime between 3 and 4 am the next morning - crash.  I reloaded to while they were on vacation, and it still happens. It seems like the neighbourhood or save was corrupted so that the crash is almost scripted to happen at that time.

To be honest, I had this problem before, and then I loaded in a game that was a week or two earlier and it works.  But I have played the game three times with three different families always starting over, even though they were always at Sunset Valley. I have not had this problem for a while, it didn't exist with Ambitions pre awesome mod or the beta awsome mod.  Granted then I was playing Twinbrook not Sunset Valley. Now the crash happens like clockwork after awesome mod is in.

This leads me to two possible problems.
A: Sunset Valley is corrupted and somehow (I don't know how) needs to be replaced. The corruption had to have been the result of Ambitions since it worked fine before that.  The only reason I did not see it earlier is because I always played Twinbrook which is just fine.

B: The only mod changed or added other than clothing/hair/lots/sims and other things that do NOT affect the game is awesome mod. (Although these can cause some problems if the mesh is busted or otherwise not compatible, but in my experience that would be mostly lag or graphical problems, not something like this). Therefore the problem must be related to awesome mod itself.

Obviously awesome mod must be rebuilt due to the extremely recent patch by EA. (Which does not solve any problems I ever had with the game). So I hope that when it is this probelm will be found and identififed

quote author=catfish link=topic=18761.msg540107#msg540107 date=1276665826]
Unfortunately that is not the case, there is absolutely no fire left on the lot. I was able to complete these fire missions before adding awesomemod in. I even started a brand new neighborhood to test it out. I have uploaded a save in which both sims have been convinced to run, all fires have been extinguished, and doors have been broken down, and the game says that none of these objectives have been completed: here.
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This is an old post but I feel obligated to answer it.  I read on the sims wikia ( http://www.sims.wikia.com ) of ths particular problem.
Here is the basic cause.  If you got to a fire, or do a ghost busting job, and IF you complete the job within 1 hour of the timer running.  Then you WILL fail the mission, guaranteed.  You can finish all the tasks it will make no difference, the sims will behave like there is still a fire or ghosts on the lot.   There is no known fix for this, the only way to surely avoid this bug is to make certain you finish the job AFTER 1 hour has elapsed.  It is apparently a well known eaxian bug.

This the second bug I noticed. The first was a mass death in china when everyone died the moment I arrived on the lot (YIKES).  I just bought a community property, I had to upgrade it and buy a lot of new stuff which should have cost me close to a hundred thousand dollars to get it to 3 stars.  But for some reason, no money was being out of my family funds.  I bought paintings, statues and other things to get it up to the right property value, but it cost me absolutely nothing to do it.

Hey, this is my first post here as a beta tester. (Yeah Me!) Anyways, I installed the awesome mod and everything worked fine until I vistied China. My sim had a want to go to the academy, but when I obliged, everyone on the lot all dropped dead at once, except for my sim.  I cannot repeat this error as of yet. I went to the market and the temple of heaven and it didn't happen there at all.  If it helps, they seem to have all starved to death, and sometimes a single sim is singled out in the town map as being in low detail mode.  They have their motives listed, and at one time, hunger was at -42. NEGATIVE 42.  I reset that sim quick to avoid their death.   This is an odd bug that I hope is tracked down soon.