I started playing after the store was closed. Is there any legal way to obtain them? Am I missing out on anything good?

Unfortunately, there is no legal way to acquire store items or pre-order bonuses. Please do not link to the myriad of illegal ways here.

My favorite search engine is Google.

That's a letdown. Oh, well.

I have another question though. Would it be worth it for me to track down the Sims Stories? Anything good there?

The Sims Stories games? From my perspective, they're mostly hyper-limited TS2 with very little replay value once you've played through the stories. I would much rather have my TS2 game with all EPs than the few new features each Sims Story game offers...though the various training props for dog shows in Pets Stories would have been nice to have in TS2.

On the other hand I did buy them all and played through each of the stories, so...if you can get them really cheaply, sure. Why not?

So, they have new items?

They have new items, but they're NOT expansion packs. They're stand alone games, which means the new items in the Stories games will only be in that particular game. Even if you have say, Pet Stories and Castaway Stories, the things you have in Pet Stories wont be in Castaway Stories.

There are websites that have extracted these items so you can put them into normal Sims 2, but like already said, they are technically illegal so I can't post any links. But it's easy to find on Google if you type the right things.

Pfff..... that yhe store shut down is not fear I only have the sims 2............. So I download thinks here..... Duh.....