Tabletop Gaming

A while back, I decided to play some Lost Cities on the 360 in front of my girlfriend.  She was intrigued, so we bought the game, but never got around to playing it.  Fast forward a few months, and we started to play it and had a great time with it.  I like the board game better than the 360 game.  This led me to show her Catan and Carcasonne, and she's fairly hyped to play the physical versions of those.

This has led us to Warhammer:Invasion and Killer Bunnies.  We played a bit of Killer Bunnies, and found it to be okay.  Yesterday, I was looking for an automatic card shuffler for these games, and decided to buy Dungeons & Dragons: Castle Ravenloft - which is more of a card/board game than your standard D&D, and also picked up Betrayal at House on the Hill.  I have also been eyeing "Last Night on Earth", a zombie game which looks pretty cool.

So this leads me to a few questions:

1) are the selected games a good introduction to adult tabletop gaming?  Are there any must haves that I'm overlooking?  Are there any new games that are worth a look?

2)  I want to train her kids to be skilled in the geek side.  Actually, I just want to teach them to think strategically and learn how to win/lose.  I would like them to play sports as well, but there is an issue of a dad they see every other weekend who refuses to take them to any extra curricular events, but that's neither here nor there.  Are there some games for the 8-10 year old range that can be a good introduction?  I had the local comic shop order a copy of Kids of Catan for them.  I haven't been able to find a D&D For Kids version though, don't know if something exists in that realm which may be good for them.

3)  In the experience of the veteran gamers out there - will these games serve as a gateway to miniature gaming?  I looked into the Star Wars miniature game briefly, but it all seemed so overwhelming.  Is there something in that arena that would be a good introduction?