User blog comment:Kittygirl7878/Questions/@comment-26744861-20110704191752

I can't really help with the second one but I can with the first.

Is the issue happening with any other families? Does your computer barely meet the minimum system requirements or do you not have much RAM? If you can load other families and the game runs fine otherwise, it's likely data corruption, usually through the usage of mods or testingcheatsenabled.