Me, personally? I don't think I would have been upset, especially having kids. I understand the need for everyone to sit together....much easier to keep everyone in check. We took up 5 preferred seats- and by the time we fly, my wife will be silver thus making 3 of us preferred. What would be the difference if 3 seperate preferreds were on the same flight, all with a companion in a preferred seat? Would you be annoyed with the companion for taking one of those seats? Basically, since there will be 3 preferreds, we would be able to get 6 of those seats, yet we are only using 5 (leaving one open for my fellow annoyed preffereds ).

And just for the record, the flight is about 6 weeks out and the flight is beyond empty. I think that we nearly doubled the amount of passengers on the flight just by us getting our tickets!