Moongardengirl, Here is what we're happily living with. Our house is about 1300 sf. with no basement and some attic storage. DH & I have one 9-yo son. #1 Four Kids Bed Rooms We only have one kid room at 10.5 x 12. It's more than fine for one child as a combo sleep/play room, but I'd probably go up to about 12 x 12 for 2 kids. #2 Kids Full Bath Ours is 6.5 x 6.5. Again great for combination kid bath and general guest bath, but I'd go just a bit larger to accomodate a double sink with counter area if more kids were sharing. #3 Master Bed 12 x 16... very comfortable with queen size bed, even includes a small sitting space. #4 Master Full Bath 5 x 10 - perfect with huge walk-in shower, no tub. I love it. Only one sink. DH & I don't need to get ready at the same time for work. #5 Master Closet Ours is opposite the master bath in the hall to the MBR area and is not a walk-in, it's 12' long, standard 2' depth. More than adequate, and easy to see everything. #6 Office I work from home, so I use a 10 x 10 space (part of the living room). It's more than I need. DH uses a tiny 6 x 3 nook that is also the throughway to the MBR... that's too small. A general purpose home office that would be just right for me would be about 6 x 8, not in a main pathway, but not closed off completely, yet close to the kitchen and laundry. #7 Powder Room/Half Bath We don't have one and I don't find a need for one. #8 No Dining Room but the "Eat In" part of the Kitchen #9 Kitchen Our combined kitchen/eatin area/tv&music room is 16 x 24. I would have liked it just a bit wider to about 18 x 24 to accommodate a bigger table as we often have about 8 people for dinner and it's a bit tight. #10 Mudroom/Clutter Room/Back Hall/Landry Room/Pantry Ours is 6 x 6 (pantry is in the kitchen). For more kids, I'd definitely go larger. We're tight with that space. #11 Living Room Our living room/dining room combo is about 12 x 20. I use part for my office and the other part is the quiet sitting area. It's more than adequate. Between the LR/DR and the Kitchen/Family Room, we have two large, open areas that allow for many different uses and make the home feel much larger than it is. People always seem surprised the house is as small sq. footage as it is. Three times a year we have between 50-150 people over and the large spaces work great. #12 Play Room/Homework Room We have a small separate 8 x 8 hobby room off the garage. I think it's important to have one messy hobby space, but not really in the main living space... your unfinished bonus room sounds ideal. I like DS doing homework at the kitchen table. I can check his work while I'm getting dinner ready or cleaning up after dinner, so I wouldn't really like a separate homework room. When DS is older, he'll probably just replace his toy area with more desk space in his bedroom. My personal preference for home spaces is compact bedrooms and baths with larger multi-purpose public spaces. One thing I'd be concerned about in your plan is by having so many rooms, they're all going to end up being small. It's nice to have generous space somewhere in the house. Also, one thought is to build it in such a way that you could in the future add a master wing. So for now build 4 bedrooms (including master) and 2 baths but if you had more kids, add a nice master br and additional bath. I've noticed on this forum, many people are building houses that are much, much larger. You might want to also post this question on the small house forum. To put things in perspective, I like space and luxury, but am not willing to live for my house or my "stuff". I prefer smaller houses. When you're ready, this forum is a great place for posting your floorplan. Folks here are so creative and helpful.

Way back before marriage and kids I took a month long vacation to Hawaii with a friend. I spent a week on Maui camping at beach parks and exploring the hiking trails. That was one of the best vacations ever!!! Now, I dream of doing a solo week long backpacking trip to the Cloud Peak Wilderness area of the Bighorns in Wyoming. If I'm going to pull that off it needs to be soon, before I can't hack it physically. Ron

I've not read through all the responses. I've not personally done this, but my son is a SAHD. My son is an archaeologist, with his masters degree achieved at UCL London -- a profession that requires travel, so he gave it up when he and his wife had their first child (now there are two). The kids are 2 and 4, and there may be another coming. Each year, he teaches one month at a local university while that professor is on a dig. He writes, has developed software for his field. But, his primary full-time job is taking care of the children, the house, the finances, etc. He also has a degree in economics/CFP certification, so he's extremely involved in their investments. He'll be 34 this summer. His wife is an anesthesiologist at a major, famous medical center. She is rather elite, being one of a few worldwide with certain training and achievement and she can't name names, but VIPs are often treated there. Her hours are very long--I've known her to work up to 80 hours in one week. Above 40, most weeks. Sixty hours is likely for several weeks per month. Her schedule rotates all the time -- days, nights, weekends. She's on call in rotation, and works in organ transplants as well as neurosurgery. She'll be 37 next month. They seem to be happy with this arrangement, but given my son's age, I'm one who worries. I worry about his longterm personal satisfaction and self-esteem. Heaven forbid they ever divorce or she dies, it would be very difficult for him to establish a career in anything, with such a big gap in employment -- in other words, I worry about his financial dependency on her if something horrible happened. I'm often helping with the kids in the evenings when she comes home, tired and quiet, from such a serious job. I hear her ask my son if he did "xyz" or "what did he do that day." It's in his answer that I detect a bit of defense in his time spent on useful things, rather than being slack. It may just be my "mom filter" and there may be nothing to it at all. At their wedding rehearsal dinner, my DIL's father even commented to me that my son's career wasn't a money-maker like his daughter's. So, there's that, too. My son doesn't have the respect from her father. I can't speak for you and your husband, but I can bring up the mother/MIL concerns.

When I was 20, my roommate and I went on a vacation to the Cayman Islands. One day, a trio of 3 men beside us on the hotel's patio (they looked to be mid 40's) started chatting with us. The said they were childhood friends, and always went on a vacation together every few years, to go deep sea fishing. They said their wives went together the same week, to some other vacation destination. They had rented a boat for the next day, and hoped to catch some 'big fish.' They said if we felt like getting offshore for half the day, we could meet them on the beach the next morning and join them. They explained that it could get pretty boring waiting for a bite, and being childhood friends who'd shared every story possible, they'd welcome some different conversation...but one laughed and added that we should feel free to bring something to read, in case we found them too boring. We asked how their wives would feel about their invitation. All 3 said their wives wouldn't be upset, as they knew their husbands frequently invited a few people to join them, and that they implicitly trusted their wives as well. So we agreed to meet them on the beach the next morning, with our packed lunches and nothing else. Just before we boarded the boat, one of them mentioned that the ride out to where they needed to go, could be pretty choppy. He offered us some Gravol, to avoid getting seasick, which we took. The pills looked 'normal' and it was back in '76, so we'd never heard of date rape drugs back then. Indeed the ocean was pretty choppy on the long ride out to sea. About an hour after they stopped, I started feeling really sleepy. My roommate later told me she'd been captivated, watching one of the men struggle to reel in a large fish for about 20 minutes. When he finally landed it, she noticed I was nowhere to be seen. She was told that I'd almost nodded off in my seat, so had gone below deck to lie down for a while. My roommate said she went down, but I was asleep, so she went back up top. Less than an hour later I awakened and rejoined everyone. Nothing was amiss, and I felt refreshed after my nap. Not long after, I watched a shark being caught and released, as it was deemed to be too young. When we returned to shore, the men were thrilled that one of them had landed a big fish that would be mounted and brought home. The next afternoon, we saw the men come back in, with 2 guys and a girl they'd apparently invited along, but no big fish. So my roommate and I were thrilled we'd been part of a successful deep sea fishing excursion! But as a mature adult in today's world, I realize how bad things could have gone. In our naivety, we'd gone with 3 virtually strange men, out to sea. No one at the hotel would have known what happened if we'd disappeared, and certainly not our families back home. There weren't even any witnesses on the beach at 5 am, or on the hotel patio when we'd left with them. Although the Gravol just made me sleepy, it could easily have been a totally different pill. Even if the men really were 'happily married to implicitly trusting wives' we still could have been killed and just dumped overboard, way out at sea. No one knew we were on board and sharks would have eaten the evidence. So my roommate and I were very, very fortunate that these truly were a trio of honorable men, who were at all times courteous and respectful to us. That still stands as the most foolish and potentially dangerous thing I ever did.