I love family play, so there definitely feels like there's a big gap in that style of play. I don't like how quickly the offspring grow up. It makes it hard to have a good family story, IMO.
Yikes. Thank goodness there was enough time to get some babies. I love to let Sims run while I do other things around the house. Hmm. Maybe I should stop doing that.
Community lots are a great way to meet friends. Then you can invite them over and use the friendly and funny interactions to develop the friendship further.
Mine used to do that, too. I found installing Overwatch and Error Trap helped a lot. I still had a little bit of it, though, so I added more RAM. Now my game runs really well.