What is the best way to organize photos? iPhoto or Aperture?

I am a mom taking tons of photos of my young children. On my old PC I used to organize everything within "My Pictures" by Month & Year (May 2008). I am a very organized, linear person and don't like to change the way I do things midstream so I am having a hard time figuring out how to organize our family photos now that I have switched to a Mac with iPhoto and Aperture. In the future I hope to learn about Aperture's professional tools (which as a mom & not a professional photographer I currently do not use). I would love to take photography classes at a local community college someday...
My questions are as follows:
1) What is the better way for ME to store our photos? Should I be uploading to iPhoto or Aperture? I basically want all of my "master photo images" in the same location in an organized fashion. I am hoping to do this without clogging up my computer. At this point I am thinking at the end of each year I will burn the year's photos to a disk for save keeping. But until then...
2) Is the "library" the over-arching place where all photos are stored? In general, I am having a hard time following the hierarchy of where my photos are being stored, how to organize them and how to completely delete bad photos.
3) Can I do everything I can do in iPhoto in Aperture? Obviously I know I can do more but is it as easy to edit/fix up photos?
I have listened to/watched several tutorials on both programs and have read through many other folks' questions/answers but I am still not sure of what to do.
I really appreciate any help/advice anyone is willing to give!
Thanks!

I'm not a professional either, just a grandma with a love of digital photography who takes lots of photos. We used to live in a motorhome full time, so we had lots of opportunities to take many photos.
I personally like Aperture better than iPhoto because I like to use some of the NIK software/plugins where I can do the adjusting right in Aperture and don't always have to send the photos to PhotoShop. Also you have a bit more flexibility as to file set ups with Aperture. In iPhoto you don't have as many nesting capabilities. iPhoto is great, but pretty basic.
I had my photos set up as files on the PC, long before I got my first Mac. So I set them up the same way. I'll try to explain
In Finder:
Pictures (in side bar on left in Finder)
Folder - My Photos
2nd Folder - by year
In the year folder I have a folder by date ie: 20000722 (year,month,date) and the photos from that date in there.
Once I got to using Aperture, I have my years set up as "projects" and the dates set up as "Albums". When importing the whole set of photos into Aperture, it was easy. I highlighted the "library", then did a right mouse click and selected "import folders as projects". That imported the photos into Aperture the same way I have them in finder.
Once everything is in Aperture, and you have new photos to add, I make an album under the corresponding year and import.
I do all my photos as referenced and don't duplicate them again, as I have them backed up in a couple of other places.
IMHO you can't back up enough! Don't wait and do it only once a year! Hard drives have a way of crashing and you'll loose all your photos. Use DVD's, thumb drives, ext. hard drives or what ever works for you. But always back up.
When I take my photos off of the memory card, I immediately send a copy to the back up external HD. Once the photos are adjusted etc. I make sure I have a copy elsewhere too. Only then do I erase them off of the memory card. Might be a bit redundant, but I'm not about to loose any of my photos. When we lived in the motorhome we were always aware of the possibility of theft or fire. So I got in the habit of taking some time to reduce the size of the photos and keep them on a thumb drive that I kept out of the RV. If anyone broke in or we had a fire, I'd still have the photos. Maybe not the originals or the bigger size, but we wouldn't loose them either.
If you want more info on non professional filing, send me a PM and I can send you a photo of my file hierarchy . (suemach (at) mac (dot) com)
Allie

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* Main.java
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