Mona, "Cheers" comes to mind from your description! I am in a dinner group and they are pretty tame, but there are 11 of us and its a pretty mixed group of mostly older people but we have fun. We meet weekly and the host is moving but we just decided on a new meeting place so I will continue that. It feels like a "family." And we drink too! I don't want to leave my kids home alone more than one-two nights a week. My youngest is just 9 and he gets lonely if the older ones don't make an effort to include him which is hit or miss.
