Household not in first options menu

Hi! I'm new here, but I've been browsing these last couple of hours to find solutions to a couple of problems and you all seem great!
So, here goes. This situation of my family not appearing in the beginning play screen was actually a result of my attempt to fix a different problem, so I'm just going to start at the beginning. Sorry if this entry gets a tad long:
I've had the Sims 3 for about a year now. I purchased it digitally and have had the occasional problems, but nothing that couldn't be fixed easily, even by someone as untalented in that area as me. A couple days ago, though, I loaded my game, and when it came up, my family was outlined and my house was, like they weren't there. It had the name of my family and the neighborhood, though, so I tried loading it. A message came up saying a serious error had occurred while loading, and that it was strongly recommended that I restart the application. I tried that, same thing. Rebooted my computer, same thing. Hmph--to Google! That's where, after browsing numerous forums to no avail (I tried using my backup files, disabling my antivirus software..all with no results) I found this forum, wit ha topic by a user with the same problem. After reading that board (her solution did not help mine), I decided I'd have to re-install the game, mostly to determine whether the game was messed up or my files. Just in case something went wrong, I copied my save files and their backups (I only had one family I wanted to save--but I REALLY want that family!) onto a separate folder on my desktop. When the game reinstalled, I just, loaded it, selected a premade family, added a tree to their lot, saved, and quit. Tried reloading it, everything worked fine. Well perfect! So I moved all of my files to my Saves folder and tried again to see if my family would crash.
Alas, though the files are in the same folder as the test.sims3 (the file for the premade family I tested with), that family is the only one that comes up as a play option. Where did my precious family go? Did I, in trying to fix the problem, make it worse?
Any help would be greatly appreciated, I've put a lot of hard work and several generations into this family!


PS--I'm running base game only. No expansion packs, no mods, no CC.

//EDIT:
On a hunch, I updated my game and installed all the EA patches to see if that was the issue. Sure enough, my family is there now, but the same error still occurs. Basically, I've done all this work for nothing! Any clue as to what could be causing the error and how to fix it? This is so frustrating!