Does Your Family Do a "Family Night"?

We got this game for Christmas, it's really fun! It says 4 years and older, but you may want to give it a spin:

http://www.uncommongoods.com/product/family-charades

Added: we also play UNO, Jenga and Go Fish a lot

To make it so everyone will enjoy it we watch movies and eat unhealthy food. I figure that way even if we don't enjoy the movie everyone will be too bloated to move. :)

We do a Family Fun Night too ~ usually it's Saturday night. I let the boys pick what they want for dinner and then they get to pick what we do :) (within reason!) they alternate weeks. Sometimes we build a huge fort in the living room and eat in their, games, the wii, the park, sledding, trip to the pet store, sleep over in the living room (I get the couch!), sleep in the motor home, a movie, bowling, eating/camping/fire outside and sometimes it's a visit to Grandma's house! The best part is letting them pick ~ they come up with some fun stuff! Of course, sometimes I have to say no, but not often.
My husband works swing and the boys really miss him on the weekends when he is gone, so I try my best to make it fun!!

We used to do as you said but also sometimes eat dinner in a park and let our daughter play on the playground.

In the summer swim and then have dinner.

Bowling

We would make the whole living room as dark as possible and lay on the floor and then watch the movie as though we were at a drive in movie.

We would go to a Bookstore and let her choose a ton of books, then we would sit and read them to her there in the store.. Then go to the cafe or ice cream shop for a treat.

We would set up a tent in the back yard and pretend to be camping.
If there were free concerts in the park, we would take a picnic and watch the concert.

Free movies in the park..

At this age, you may not be able to stay for the full event, but that is ok, at least you got out of the house.

We don't do a regular "family night" thing. Our kids are a little older (10 1/2 & 13 1/2) and my husband has a rather unusual work schedule that makes a "family night" quite a challenge. We tend to (and always have) try to do smaller things. Like:

7:30 is Jeopardy! We will all "watch" (well, really we are yelling answers) together sometimes. It used to be "Lingo" on Gameshow network. It was our youngest's favorite show (she was 5 at the time and was GREAT at the game).
We get Netflix (streaming also) and so we will have a "Rockford Hour", where we will all lounge on the sectional in the den and watch an old episode of The Rockford Files, often with popcorn.

Once a month or so, we will spend Sunday afternoon all sprawled out in our bedroom (the kids will fight over the recliner of course, and someone will end up on the end of the bed or on the floor), the black out shades drawn, and watch a movie together. Halfway through, husband will pause the movie and go into the kitchen and make popcorn on the stove (whirly-pop). Hubby and I share a big bowl. The kids share a big bowl. Sometimes it will be an old movie, sometimes it will be something more recent.

We also like to go TO the movies as a family. We've seen a ton of animated stuff over the years (and I plan to take them to see The Lorax), but also things like: National Treasure, Indiana Jones, True Grit, The Dark Knight and most recently, War Horse.

Rarely, we will sit around and play something like Scattergories or Yahtzee or Farkle! The kids love those.

we don't really have a designated family night but we do have movie night sometimes.

Wii Sports Resort tournaments!!!
Uno
Sorry Express

We do similar things, but the games are finally harder! (mine are 8 and 10) Last Friday night was real special b/c we actually went to Walmart to buy a new movie (something we never do - it's usually Redbox, Netflix, or whatever) They girls thought that was really cool. Sometimes instead of ordering pizza or going out I'll get all kinds of toppings for make your own pizza. And they LOVE make your own dessert pizzas! If it's nice outside we'll do a family walk around the neighborhood. Sometimes we come up with dumb games while we walk, like how many electric boxes can you count? Sounds like your wife and I are the same person - I get up on Saturdays to get in my long runs!

We have family time on Wednesday night, Saturday night (sometimes day) and all day Sunday. We eat meals together; often Dad makes pancakes on Sunday.

We like to go for hikes together. We also go to the nature center, a petting zoo, museums, or a live performance of music or a children's play. We also enjoy bicycling, going to the playground, watching the moon rise, watching the sun set, and having picnics.

My daughter gets bored with board games quickly, so she focuses on drawing, building and make believe games. We read together.

We watch a movie at home on occasion, but usually that is mom/daughter time at night on the nights Dad works (or when hubby is alone with dd during the day and wants a nap!).

I also have done, "What's the question of the day?" and we look up the answer on the internet or find the answer outside in nature. There is some amazing stuff to be found on youtube.

We have a spot in our living room to make a large mural out of construction paper that we do together. We also turn up the music and dance!

Enjoy!

Every night we spend together is a family night.

google family home evening. Although it will be religious sites that come up they will have tons and tons of other activities for the whole family to do. Such as a service project, making food for a shut in, doing crafts the whole family will enjoy, games, and of course a focus on teachings that would unite the family in Christ like behavior. You can take from the sites what you can apply and not worry about the rest. But I find that I can plan out a whole year in advance and still have ideas brimming over of things to do.

Usually Saturday is our family day. Our kids are 5 and 2. We will go play miniature golf (Victor's free), or go bowling (he's free again), or take a walk in the nature preserve (Joseph loves hunting for giants, and last time we saw a bald eagle, 2 alligators, and a deer only about 50 feet away, jumping and running through the marsh!), or my favorite: the beach. Sometimes we play bocce, fly a kite, kick the soccer ball around, lay down, let the boys get dirty digging holes, chasing birds, and hunting horseshoe crabs. In the summer we just like to play in the water. We TRY to have little adventures: tour a farm, go look at light houses, just "stuff". My favorite thing is livingsocial.com because we get great deals off restaurants, bounce houses, a dolphin cruise, a kayaking trip, etc. Sometimes we stay close to home and play croquet, horseshoes, t-ball, soccer in the backyard, or we set up the tent and have a backyard campout and cook s'mores and hot dogs on the grill. For games we like jenga, uno, go fish, candyland, hi ho cherry-o, trouble, chutes & ladders, but also we have these great dice we got where you toss the dice and it comes up with a subject and you have to tell a story (we use a sand timer from another game or else my 5 year old will NEVER shut up, lol). We try to do charades. We dance a lot to my youtube favorites list. When daddy's not home, we do karaoke (especially if my friend and her son are here). If the 2 year old is sleeping, I like to play hangman, mancala, checkers, operation, or pictionary with the 5 year old. If the boys are asleep, we play dirty minds, scrabble, risk, cribbage, backgammon, chess, scattergories. Scrabble is our favorite though. We sometimes watch movies with the kids (like once a month?), but we do love to wait for them to go to sleep so we can watch The Tudors, The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret, Breaking Bad..."grown up TV". But I like to take the kids to the movie theater (that's a mommy thing, not a daddy thing).
We sometimes do a little craft: make cards, or a joint family painting, or polish stones for our treasure chest so we can lure a cyclops later and trap him, we did gingerbread sleighs this Christmas and that was hilarious. Really just "anything". We love live theater, sporting events (even just the local highschool or whatever), and museums.
We don't have a specific dinner: we'll eat anything but sushi (well...Jer likes sushi. I don't like it b/c it wiggles. Yes, I know that sounds stupid, but I don't care).
Have fun!

We love having fires in the fireplace and playing UNO. Our boys are 7 and 14, and our oldest is getting a bit sick of UNO, so we're soon going to start playing other card games. We also love movies.

Something else we do from time to time is go on "(enter last name) Family Adventures." We love doing this, and we've done it for years! We pick a place to go that is within driving distance, no more than an hour or so away. It's best if it is somewhere none of us has ever been before. We take a camera and pretend we are on vacation. We take pictures of EVERYTHING, just like on a real vacation. We've gone canoeing through rapids, taken a train through downtown, gone to a drive-through wildlife park, and several other things. It's great! We all get into the spirit of it, and it's wonderful fun when you get in a rut, but don't have time (or money) for a full-blown vacation. :)

Because of my husband's schedule we were never really able to have a pre-set "family night."
However, we made the most of our time on the weekend by:
-going to parks, beaches, zoos, movie matinees, museums, shows
-shopping together at the local Saturday morning farmer's market
-watching family friendly movies at home, at our leisure
-as far as challenging games I suggest Memory (basic) and Stare (a bit more advanced, and your kids will likely beat you!)
-even a trip to Costco (or Target) was an adventure!
Around here, Sunday night is "dad's night" that is, I have the night off and my husband cooks dinner. Maybe you could start "mom's night" in your house? I highly recommend it!!!
And don't forget "date night" which is equally important ;)

We do family night every Sunday. Kids come home, bring boyfriends, random people show up knowing we do this, we eat, talk, play Jenga, Catch Phrase, cards, hang out, and then everyone goes home (or upstairs!) We have done this for several years and our kids still make time for family dinners.

It's my favorite day of the week!

Our ex's have our kids every other weekend so on the Friday nights we have all 3 kids, we call it "Family movie night". We only have pizza and salad and watch a "kid" movie. I'm also thinking about adding a family game night on a different night. We have a few games but have never really been into playing any. Now the kids are older and I think it will be fun. I also got a family devotional book and we just started to read it before the kids get in the shower. It's a brief story and then questions that go with it and its helped get the kids to talk to us more and give them some ideas on how they can handle situations that come up.

We don't really have a family night (we do have rituals tho) my husband normally come backs Friday night (me and him go to the movies), Saturday we are all together, some times we do fun things like going to parks, conventions, petting farms, etc, but other we just need to get things done.
We always eat out on Saturday, or if we are watching a movie we order food.
Sunday mornings we either make pancakes or get Dunking Donouts, we all help clean the house, then I help him get his luggage ready and we all go to the airport to say good bye.
Every once in a while he works from home or doesn't have work, but since is very weird we don't have plans we we all go with the flow, lol

we have hungry hungry hippos which my 5 year old loves :)

my favorite family night (and my son's) is "camping" night. we turn out all the lights in the house and use flashlights. we make tents out of blankets and tell stories and sing songs. when we did it it was warm out, and we had a fire in the fire pit and roasted hotdogs and marshmallows. instant classic!

Someone mentioned UNO already, but Disney UNO adds a little extra fun. Another activity idea would be a fun how to dance dvd. We have a couple that I may have bought through Highlights or somewhere like that. Pick out the dance style your family would like.

We have family night every other night we have arts and crafts play card games phase 10 is mine and my husbands and my sons favorite game we ride bikes together renovate the house together build new things together.and once a week we all get in the kitchen and bake and cook together hope this gives you some more ideas. :)