It finally happened. My wife started asking about and now wants to play DnD. My kids (16 &18) have played a couple of times with their Aunt. No clue what system they played but their characters seemed very unstructured, like they could sort of invent a class and build up to it.

I played a lot back in the 90s and early 00s. Played DnD, ADnD, and ADnD 2E was where we stopped. We were doing some Ravenloft campaigns. I'm a really good story teller and with the most experience I'll DM for them.

What Players Handbook should I go with for a newbie group like this? Should I get a little 8x8 or 10x10 grid and some minis for encounters?

Can I forgo the DMs rulebook and just get like a premade quests for small beginner groups? Something that has a little bit of mystery and a little bit of a big bad guy to kill?

5e is quite streamlined and easy to get into. It offers decent variety in characters without getting super heavy with the rules, so it should work fine if you are new/out of practice. There is an essentials kit that comes with basic rules and a short adventure. I know they are revamping the essentials kit, but I don't know if the new one is out yet. It's definitely the best thing to start with if you don't want to buy the whole set of core books. And of course, I cannot advise you to look for bootleg PDFs of the books online. That would be wrong, even if they are fairly easy to find most of the time.

Thanks.

I picked up the 5e players handbook. I see the DMGuide has a short adventure called Mines of Phandelver so I'll run that one while I go thru ideas for a campaign in my head. I like how nothing has negatives now... sort of. Last time i ran a Barbarian they were afraid of magic, as a class feature LOL that sucked

Mines of Phandelver is the old intro adventure which they are about to replace. I haven't played it, but I've heard stories that there is an encounter in there which is occasionally far deadlier than intended. If you are going to run it, I suggest looking that up to make sure you don't accidentally TPK your family in their first session.

LOL, I would destroy 3 lvl-3 PCs with a green dragon let alone 3 newbies. Yeah, most of these encounters will need to be toned down. Thanks for the heads up

So we did a session 0 and built characters. We've got a Dragonborn Warlock named Sparktavius, a Garden Gnome Wizard named Argyle, and Solis the Half-Orc Druid.

The first session was finishing up spell books and getting to know each other. They got thru the goblin ambush pretty well. However the druid and wizard blew thru both if their Lv1 spell slots. It was fine, they killed all the goblins and did not find the trail so they finished the trip into town and will take a long rest next session right after they turn in the wagon.