I'm glad that worked for you. My experience has become that as my friends groups have gotten older, getting larger groups together has become very difficult. You have to plan it far enough in advance that everyone has sufficient notice, you need a venue large enough to host everyone, people have kids that need to be accommodated somehow, and everyone also lives further apart. All of these mean that we've gone from getting together once or twice a month to maybe once every 3 months or so. So while everyone still keeps in touch online, in-person meetups have reduced a lot in frequency.
You shouldn't obsess on having everybody or even the majority of your groups together. Besides your friends also have friends and vice-versa that aren't part of your circle so you shouldn't even think of having any kind of exclusivity.
People come and go in your life.
What I am struggle with aren't local acquaintances but friends that aren't local to me anymore.
Yeah this is my experience too. Especially, once you have kids, it is so hard to align everybody's nap times, classes, etc.
And if you somehow are able to get whole group together, then too many preschoolers around is just chaotic. Heard it will be easier once kids are older.
But for now, we usually hang out with one or maybe two families at a time.
