I love family dinners as long as I don't have to cook. I'm fortunate that my DIL loves to entertain and cook and she plans lots of family dinners.

I love big family dinners and I love to cook but it's getting harder and harder to get everyone together at 1 sitting....Christmas and Easter, everyone, or those able, comes here for breakfast which we really look forward to.....

I love having the family together and I enjoy all of the planning but the cooking and clean up is beginning to really drag me down. I always have offers from the DIL's to help with clean up but it's just easier to navigate alone in my own kitchen. I am just a sucker for family gatherings...can't get enough of them.

I love to prepare family dinners! But they are RARE!

I love Family Dinners, but feel like I spend so much time in the Kitchen I don't get to visit enough. Dean use to enjoy helping out, but has lost interest with his balance problem.

Love them...love to cook for them. I do 1-2 Sunday dinners a month.

I love holding big family dinners too and I enjoy cooking for them.

Family dinners ended in 2005 when MIL died. Her house was central to all of us for traveling. I cetainly miss those holiday dinners. We tried to keep the tradition alive by having Thanksgiving at SIL's house twice, but since then we've all drifted apart. Sad.

No, they stress me out more than anything.

I always loved them, even did most if not all of the cooking - I simply enjoyed the whole process, from deciding how I wanted the table to look to the menu. If someone acted like they really wanted to bring something, I loved that too -

Often these years it's just the two of us, we live very far away from any family and our close friends don't, so they have family they go to. But you know, I still do it all, just cook in much, much smaller portions. We even "dress" for the dinner - we simply love the whole experience and it doesn't happen that often.

We do, however, entertain a lot on the "non holidays" throughout the year, both casual and simi formal, so I still get it out of my system.

I have 3 teenagers and I admit that I had stopped family dinners for awhile, thinking my teenagers didn't care. Finally I came to my senses and not only are we having family dinners again, they are in the dining room!

The only family we have here is Bobby and he lives with us. I love to cook so I have a lot of our friends over for dinners. They don't have family here either since they also are retired military and settled far away from family. When I have big meals here we often have 13 or more friends over. Sometimes I do the whole meal and sometimes I do the main course and they bring the sides. We have lots of fun and they share in taking home leftovers. Our weather is beautiful most of the year so the guys sit outside on the patio and eat and talk guy talk and the gals go in the dining room to eat and gab. Sometimes we have sit down dinners in the dining room it just depends on what we are having. All the gals pitch in with the cleanup which I appreciate.

I used to love them, but there have been so many divorces and estrangements in the family and close relatives that have all moved out of town that they rarely occur. I miss them.

I love them and miss them terribly. I am not a very good cook, but I can do it if I have to. I miss going to my brothers house- my cousins would join us and what fun! My DH has a large family and I actually miss those gatherings! We now live a whole country apart from them. No matter where we were everyone pitched in with food and clean up- Just the 4 of us now.

Trish

Trishaw, isn't that the greatest to have friends and family come. Everyone pitches in and you have good conversations. I can still remember the good big get togethers we would have at my Grandma's house and her meals were and still are my favorite foods. Chicken and noodles, mashed potatoes, fried chicken, green beans, corn on the cob, fresh tomatoes, cole slaw, chicken dressing, yeast rolls, and her pies. Such good memories. I really miss her.

Sue

Big get-togethers usually turn out the same. Separated into small groups of 3-4 so what's the point? Usually it's the same cliques that are together until someone turns on the TV or radio and then it's over anyway. I much prefer smaller groups, 2-5 people is about right. You can enjoy the company far better.

Now if you meant having the family eat together, that's different. I did enjoy when we'd sit down at the table together. Wasn't often we'd eat separately unless Dad was late from work or something special going on. I think the loss of the family meal together is contributory to a lot of problems in this world.

i've gotten lazy the older i get and love going to the kids homes...it can get a bit overwhelming with 10 adults and 7 kids...

I love family dinners and we have them with pretty great regularity!! It is not unusual for the phone to ring during the week and a little voice says "Grandmommie, will you cook ____________ for us on Sunday". What can I say??? :^)

I love the cooking, the meal and the company...but, the cleaning before (we're pack rats, it is so bad I hate drop in company because of it)...but when my house was newer and neater...It was great! I guess the loss of family members tends to make it harder too.

But my DD and her family are coming in for Easter Week...and dumb me, here I sit in front of this machine...wasting time when I should be doing toilets! Get up Rusty and get busy! I needed that pep talk!

I LOVE my in laws and sisters in laws and their husbands!! I married into the best dog-gone family!! I LOVE FAMILY DINNERS WITH MY IN-LAWS!!! Plus hubs and I have been married longer than any of his four sisters. My husband always teases his brother in laws telling them that "we" have seniority in the family. LOL