Do you have one? We’ve had several and I just started thinking about this again after having lunch with my BFF this week.

She told me that they celebrate the end of the week as a family every Friday night. They go out for dinner and rent a movie together. I love that they do this, and can imagine them all snuggled on the couch together!! I love dedicated family bonding time in the midst of daily chaos.

Jeff and I used to have a Family Night on Fridays too, although our routine is to not keep to a routine, even though we try.

We started out with pizza and a movie on Fridays when the kids were younger. Then we moved to Boy Scouts with Christian and they met on Friday nights. So our routine changed. This lasted for awhile, until we joined a Parents Night Out co-op with other families from our church on Friday nights. We would drop our kids off for two hours and have a date night, while other nights we would stay with another couple and watch all the kids. This worked for awhile until our kids kind of outgrew the need for sitters.

We spend an incredible amount of time together as a family, so I hadn’t really thought about a dedicated family night until I was planning dinner tonight. For the past three weeks in a row, we’ve been attending a BBQ at our swim club with other friends. The club provides the meat, condiments, and paper and plastic goods. The members bring a side dish to share along with their own drinks, and some members volunteer to run the BBQ and serve everyone. It’s a great setup and I guess this has become our new family routine. I hope it lasts!

TGIF – have a great weekend!!