Does anyone do extended family dinners?
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Anonymous
Huh? To me that's a really weird thing to say. My kids are 24, 21, 20, 18, and 12. We are in DC every couple of years for between 9 and 12 months but when we are "home" we go to Sunday dinner after church. We love getting together with family. My kids are in college and spread all over everywhere now. My 24 year old lives about 30 minutes from his grandparent's (my parents) house. He and his fiancé almost always make it over for Sunday dinner. When we lived in the same town, my teens rarely missed eating at the grandparents. My sisters and brothers are there with their children. When my grandparents were alive, they always came by. My aunts and uncles were able to be there at least once a month. It's wonderful to watch all the kids running around together! My kids are like siblings with their cousins. |
Anonymous
| My MIL used to have us over every Sunday for dinner. She is a hoarder and her hoard has taken over the entire house (even though totally cleaned it out last year) so..no more Sunday dinners. I plan to start doing them myself. |
Anonymous
| I used to get together with my parents and sister and family for Sunday dinner at least once a month. We'd do it early enough so kids still had time to get school stuff done. My parents are now both deceased and I really miss those gatherings. |
Anonymous
| So. What if both you and your spouse gave thus tradition. So you choose one, split up, or alternate? |
Anonymous
| My family has Sunday night dinner, too. We love it and the cousins are so close! |
Anonymous
| Aw, I want to start doing this. My sister and parents live close enough that we could. |
Anonymous
I'm a PP. We've talked about this since there is a good chance one or both of DH's parents would move to this area. We'd alternate. Or go down to once a month at each parents' house and once a month stay home. Not really a big deal. |
Anonymous
| We do -- four generations almost every Sunday for supper. We aren't Italian, good 'ol melting pot American. My 95-year-old grandmother gets tired easily, so it's really just dinner and only lasts about an hour. But we all look forward to it each week and feel really lucky that we all live close enough to be able to do it. |
Anonymous
We don't do it every week, but try to on a monthly basis. It's great! Our problem is that our matriarch hates to cook, and doesn't really enjoy having everyone come over either.  . So the siblings rotate hosting duties. I'm glad we do it.
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Anonymous
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My sister is moving back to the area soon and I can't wait to start doing this! Weekly might be ambitious, but I'd love it if it was a regular thing. When it's so frequent, you learn to just plan your life around it, so I think that's great.
I would NEVER want to do this with my inlaws though. I try to go to their house no more than once every other month. But that's just because people bicker and yell at each other on that side so it's anything but relaxing. |
Anonymous
And can't stand football. 
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Anonymous
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My parents are dead. Problem solved.
DH's family is super boring/materialistic/annoying, so we see them for family dinners about 4 times a year. DH is free to visit them at will, but he rarely goes without me and DD. Win, win situation. |
Anonymous
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We do this with my siblings and their spouses and kids. We all go back to mom&dad's home. We try to do it every Sat or Sunday. It's getting kinda hard since each of the spouse seem to think we are over spending our time together.
One SIL doesn't even want to come. She comes maybe twice a year. And when she doesn't want to come, she doesn't want my brother to bring the kid either. Even if she is busy doing something else. Sometimes my brother shows up alone. I think that's sad because if you can't go, why don't you let him bring the kid. 2-3 hours is all we ask. SIL tries to act innocent and say, why is my son crying all the time when he says grandparents. Duh! Because we are strangers to him. He never sees grandparents! Yet, she spends all the weekends with her own parents. My own spouse is an only child, so he doesn't really know what it's like to have a big family. And doesn't understand what is the need to see each other each week. I mean he sees him own parents about 2 times a week. All the commotion is our way of communication. Maybe it's a bit of jealously/envy cause he says he doesn't get to see his parents often. It's not my fault your parents decided to move so far away before I even came into the picture. |
Anonymous
| We have extended family gatherings for holidays and birthdays, so about 20 times per year. It's pretty nice. |
Anonymous
| Yea dude..thats not a tough deal |