To to clarify and alleviate any doubt? If the choice were an HTT or a tent, I'd take the HTT over the tent any day!
However, like a tent, or a pop-up, you still have to deal with wet ends that get folded up. Like a pop-up, it has to be opened up and dried out when you get home.
As you can tell by my responses, rain was never our friend doing 15 years of tent camping with my wife and kids, and then 6 years of pop-up camping after that. Seems every time we went out, it rained. Everything was always wet. That's what I really remember about those days.
When we got the first hard sided trailer, it seems rain was never an issue again.
We considered an HTT when we transitioned from pop-up to travel trailer. I wasn't ready to give up that outside coming inside feeling by being confined inside 4 solid walls. But the wife said she'd never go camping again if she couldn't stay dry. Thus the first hard side. It took a very short time to accept and actually like the change and haven't regretted it since.
Hopefully, my illogical negativism has given the OP something to think about.
To quote the OP and the very center of my replies: "we have a 3 yr old and a 1 yr old and need to not worry about the rain or overall weather conditions."
Anything with cloth or canvas sides is going to cause you worry and you'll have to deal with weather conditions, unlike a hard sided trailer. The HTT will not be trouble free as you are looking for. That's all I'm trying to say.
