DH and I have been friends with another couple we met in college for like 13 years now. We’ve spend New Year’s Eve with them for probably the last 9 years. The first few years we’d go out for dinner, dancing or something else fun. Once they had kids, we’d go over for dinner at their house, play with the kids and play board games until midnight, still fun! We love them very much and also love their kids, but they now have 3 kids aged 6, 3 and 1. They are still fun and we see them frequently, but spending the day with 3 kids that age can be exhausting. DH and I are thinking of having kids in the next year or two, and this year, we’d kind of like to do something different for New Year’s. We don’t really have any other plans, we’re just thinking we’d rather not spend the day with their kids. But we know our friends really look forward to spending NYE with us, so we feel really guilty making other plans when we’ve spend the last 9 years with them and we know they assume we’ll just do it again this year.
So my question is: should we just suck it up and spend NYE with them? Or can we tell them we’d like to do something else, even though we don’t have concrete plans yet? Are we awful for wanting to go out and celebrate with adults? If we do make other plans, are they going to hate us?