I'm a noob to the miles/points hoarding, and this website has been invaluable.

My wife and I like to travel, we are young, and want to take advantage of a few good vacations before we have some kids.

We have a couple of trips in the works for this year, she and I will be going to Seattle for 6 nights in June and to New England with another couple for 8 nights in September.

I think I have a good handle on the airline promo's and cards, etc.
I will have:
100K - AA (spend $5k, 4 mo)
30K - Delta (spend $.5k)
40K - Us Airways (no spend)
30k - UR (Freedom bonus, no spend)

My wife will have:
30K - Delta (spend $.5k)
50K - UR (spend 3k, 3 mo)

So we have some good options there once we meet our spend.

Most of these app's have happened in the last month. She has a 760+ credit score, mine is 715 after my last churn.

So for airfare and some hotel, we should be set with those points, but I see that there's some good options for hotels out there and would like to utilize our good credit situations to get free rooms in the places we'll stay.

My question is...what Hotel programs should we target?
We each have applied for and been approved a Chase card in the last month, so that puts us out on getting another Chase card for 6 mo, correct? So the Hyatt, Marriot, and Priority club offers aren't available, right?

So, should she try for Hilton Honors points? The Citi 40k card, plus the two Haiwaiin Airlines 35k cards for 180K Hilton Honors points? I'm saying her because her score is higher and I think I need to cool it for at least 90 days to let my score rebound.

Any other hotel options?

I understand that the points/miles are most valuable for international travel, however, we just did 2 weeks in Italy so for the next year or so we'd like to stay domestic.

Sorry for the long post, but I just wanted to show you guys that I did my homework.