Sometimes, when sims travel abroad, family ties can be damaged. Sims can also be cloned. Check the population. Maybe in the game there are evil clones? This is a known bug. I recommend you "save as" your game every time you are going to go abroad. You can delete clones. You can delete clones if they appear. You can also delete and restore family relationships.

Thank you everyone. I don't' have traveler mod, somehow I missed that when getting my list of mods together. But I will definitely get that. So much to file through ya know. I am finally happy to see this was thing and not just some unique glitch with my game.
sittingbear - that would have really freaked me out, I'm glad I don't have woohoo installed...haha. I'm actually fine with being the one who initiates taking things to the bedroom, I've debated that mod a few times, but I just figure it'd be that much more I'd have to spend time figuring out and I still get brain strain from the caste systems and some of the other complex things I'm still learning from what I do have. haha

About installing the Traveler mod. I only have University Life as far as expansions for traveling. There's a lot listed in interactions I don't really understand and I'm assuming because I don't have the other expansions. Is there anything I should be aware of since I only have Uni?

Woohooer, again, is a romance manager. It can be set (accidentally or on purpose) so that no one can woohoo or romance anyone else at all. Or so that every sim will try to get frisky with anything (anyone) that moves all day, every day. Most of us strive for something in between and a bit more in the realm of the realistic. Figuring out how to best leverage is part of the fun, but as with most mods doing so should be planned and not be a sudden surprise.

Traveler unlocks world travel to any world you have installed. So if your Riverview sims want to vacation in Twinbrook, they can do so (assuming you have Ambitions), or any custom world as well. But it's not necessary to use that feature. It's worth having even if Uni World and back are the only travel transitions likely to be in play right away. There aren't really all that many interactions when dealing with the mod, the options are all on City Hall. Which ones are you finding to be a bit confusing? The important thing is not the options but that the mod automatically replaces the travel transitions with ones less prone to breakage and does a much better job (to say the least) of protecting sim data along the way.

<a href="http://nraas.wikispaces.com/Traveler%20 ... actions</a>
(you can ignore anything about descendants, those options are only for travel to and from Oasis Landing which requires ITF)

Igazor - thanks again! I will try them both. I just take things slow because I want to learn as much as I can about each mod before adding another. It would be fun to have sims run off to bed on their own once in a while. (just not with uncle Rick or Grandpa!)
I have had autonomous woohoos without mods though: it occurred a couple of times right after the sims were married. I had been told this couldn't happen, but it did in my Sims household. I sat and watched my just married couples autonomously do the "be frisky" thing and then ran off to bed and did their thing. Of course it's never happened once that newly wed thing wears off, but I have seen it happen more than once. No babies formed from it though. So IDK if that was unique to me or some glitch, but it was fine with me. LOL