Al take a serious look at the flying you actually do, especially with three kids and a missus who are NOT massively keen on flying.
For a relatively inexpensive, fun toy it's hard to beat one of the RV's - decent climb and cruise performance, beautiful to fly, nice for formation and gentleman's aerobatics. On the rare occasions you do actually want to take more than one other person, rent the A36, Navajo, C310, Baron, C402B, whatever takes your fancy...
...at the end of the day they're all just six seat trucks designed to take people from A to B, and while they might be nice to fly, they don't fit the fun category.