Update..

We went to the Verizon store and asked about the Mother's Day sale mentioned above, and they said we should wait until Father's Day since there most likely will be another sale that week. The Mother's Day sale was so popular they extended it until last Monday, and we had missed it by days It was for $100 of any smartphone.

We settled in on the 5s, keeping our plan and just adding data & texts, and getting 2-32gb. But now that I'm thinking about it, since most of my friends have iphones, I wonder if I'm really going to use $20 worth of texts each month. I'm assuming that it doesn't matter if they're on Verizon or some other system - imessages are data. at .20 per text, we would have to use 100 texts to spend that $20. So I'm thinking of just not getting it, and see how much we use. If we're close, we can add them on later.

Thanks for all the advice! I'll keep everyone posted.