Combining MacBooks and adding iPad

My husband and I each came into our relationship with our own Macbook. We now want to get an ipad to have a device more portable and then pare down to one Macbook as mine is a bit older and on it's last leg unless i update memory and buy a new battery.

Does anyone have any advice on my strategy of keeping all my photos, videos, music and documents? In theory, should I be able to easily put all my photos, videos and music from my Macbook to my new ipad and then ultimately sync my ipad with my husbands MacBook moving forward? Or do I need to combine all my music and photos onto my husband's MacBook and then when I get my new ipad, sync it there? I'm guessing the latter, assuming that my husband's MacBook has the capacity. Any advice on how best to do this, if so? My biggest fear is losing everything (even though I have everything backed up onto a back up drive through Time Machine.

Any thoughts are much appreciated!

Sort of depends on you and your husband's use of the machines and how much space you are speaking of. In my case we have two 64 GB WIFI/4G iPads and one MB Pro to sync them with, not to mention home sharing with two MB Airs. My iTunes folder is 45 GB by itself. My photos occupy 345 GB. No way on earth I can jam all that onto either of the iPads so I simply use two external drives (one primary, one backup) to hold the images. One of those backup drives is a 500 GB Seagate GoFlex Satellite which WIFI connects to either or both of the iPads.

Works for us.

Thanks for your perspective. We both use our MB for music, photos and internet. I'll have to take a look at our library sizes and figure that out. You gave a great idea for the backup drive that accesses via WIFI for the ipad. Then I'll just need to learn how to get the contents of my computer over to my husband's, before we retire it. Thanks!

And the beauty of the GoFlex Satellite is that it creates it's own WIFI network with the iPad without regard to any other WIFI availability. In other words it works in the desert, it works on a plane, wherever.