Do you do things with other families?

[tomhazard]

Was idly thinking about what to do tomorrow and have settled on a pub lunch somewhere work dh and 2 dc. I am quite social by nature and think it would be nice to invite other families/friends with us but we just don't really socialise like this. I have a few friends that I see independently of DH and same for him, but we don't really have friends that are whole families to do anything like this. Also don't have family with nieces/nephews Nearby.

My best friend from uni (lives London) always seems to have other couples and families to do things with, and I have other friends who do this too. I feel like I might be missing something!

Do you have family/couple friends? If so how did you make them?! I have got friends but I'm not inundated and we would rarely be invited to bbqs or lunches unless it was a work based thing.

Sadly no. We have two kids with Sen who can do most things but it seems a lot of people have families or lots of friends. It’s sad as it makes the weekends quite isolating.

We do. We're very lucky that I met the mum of my child's best friend by chatting to her at school. We then moved really near to them (not by design!). Our other kids get on really well. DH and friends DH are good friends too.
There's not many people I really like but these guys feel like family now. We do all sorts together, including holidays. We all do stuff independently without the kids or DH and they do too.
My other friends I tend to see on their own/just the kids.
It's only this one family we've really clicked with. It's lovely and we are lucky.

Gwencooper81 that sounds really nice. My kids would love to have other kids to play with more regularly - cousins are far flung!

We don’t have loads but some really really good friends. In all cases they were my friends first (the mums) and our dhs have since made friends too. Mostly I met them when the dc were babies, one family I have been friends with the mum since we were 5!

2 families we go away with as well (there was a 3rd family but I don’t think they enjoyed it as much as we did!). I realise we’re very lucky.

It really is. Just a nice coincidence that we moved very close to them and now spend lots of time together.
I have zero family so its lovely for the kids.
I hope you manage to find a nice family near by. My DH works shifts and weekends would be lonely without our friends. I

I do things with other mums and their kids, but not whole families. I think this is down to the fact that my dh is not that social a person. He will do polite small talk, but he doesn't put the effort in to get to know the dads like I do the mums.

Yes, we have a few - DH'a school friends are a large group and still really close, and all the Wii men of the group also get on really well (luckily!). As families we holiday together, and again, very luckily the children get on famously.

We also have a large local group of friends, where often the men play sport together or maybe pop down the pub, the women meet up for lunch/drinks/sport as well. All met via local playgroups then preschool and school. Families will get together for parties or dinners, camping trips etc. That's just village life though I think.

I would love to have 'family friends' who we could do outings/ day trips / holidays with.
Sadly we don't. Only really socialise with our individual friends or members of the extended family.

How can I make friends with other local parents well enough to become family friends. Lol. I feel silly saying this.

Not locally, but we have good friends in other countries with whom we go on holiday all together -- DH and DS are currently in the Pyrenees with one family (who are Madrid-based) and we rented a house in France with another family (who live in Paris) last summer. It would be nice to have more of that locally, but where we currently live has been a bit of a dud for adult friendships in general.

We do as much as possible because DS is an only child. We do things with other families, borrow one of DS’s friends for the day or I do things with the mum’s from school and their DC. I’m not a social person and I find it exhausting. I would love to have 2 children to keep eachother company. I push myself for DS though and actually, thinking about it it’s forced me to be less antisocial.

Occasionally, but often it’s a PITA to make arrangements that suit everyone, or some of the DC don’t get on.

We had friends who happened to have DCs of the same sex very close in age to us and it does work well. We both have the need to burn off lots of excess boy energy in NT parkland at the weekend, so often arrange late notice trips out to fill a hole.

It helps that we are fairly similar in parenting style and are happy to instruct each others' children when necessary. That's a major one in sucessfully mixing friends and children.

Occasionally when kids were younger but mine are past that age - mostly bbq's and dinners at people's houses (they still get invited but generally decline)

Thanks for the replies. Food for thought and I think I should make an effort to try and find these family friends! We both work full time and our DC Have each other and get along so we haven't had a need, it's just a 'want' from me I guess! I have more desire for friendship than DH full stop though

We’re close friends with 3 other couples and all do stuff together, though the women are more friends than the men are. We go to a beer festival together every year, camping, have dinner at each other’s houses. We’re the only ones to have a baby so far but one of the other couples is pregnant and another is planning so I imagine the stuff we do will get more family orientated as more babies come along. As it is, our daughter just enjoys getting fussed over by 6 extra people!