A 7-hour ordeal? I wouldn't want to brew all-grain either if that's what it took.
A typical all-grain day is 5 hours for me. I can shorten that by maybe 45 minutes by doing some things ahead of time--which sounds like something you should consider when kids enter the equation.
Perhaps you can crush your grain ahead of time, lay out all your hop and mineral additions, and so on. Maybe you can set up everything ahead of time so that when the kiddies are down, you're right into it with no delay.
When I started doing this I saw all sorts of inefficiencies of time and effort. So I worked to reduce the steps needed, make sure things are right at hand, and so on. If I have to move things around all the time, I'm not organized nor am I efficient. I store my brew stuff in the garage in a rolling cabinet so I don't have to schlep it all up and down the stairs to the basement. I crush the grain in the basement but that's it.
I borrow a few items from the kitchen, but I'm working on getting them all in my brew equipment so I don't have to go searching. Things like a small colander, a turkey baster, like that. Searching for them in the kitchen takes time, and it all adds up. Some people probably don't think saving 10 seconds here, 20 seconds there, is important, but it is. It gives you extra time to think, preplan, rearrange, and reduce wasted motion.
Another tip is cleaning as you go. While my wort is heating to a boil, I'm rinsing out the mash tun, rinsing out the 5-gallon kettle, putting stuff away I no longer need. There is downtime in a 5-hour brew; if I'm sitting there with nothing to do, I'll look to clean something, put it away, arrange things for more efficiency, whatever. Once I'm past the hot break during the boil, I'm getting out the immersion chiller and hooking it up, so when I need it, it's right there.
Related to that is cleaning stuff immediately. As soon as the immersion chiller comes out of the kettle, I put the kettle lid on to keep nasties from entering, and take that chiller to the sink to rinse it off. Takes maybe 30 seconds to rinse it, but if I let it sit and have stuff dry on it, that increases the time to clean. Same w/ the boil kettle--as soon as I've racked to the fermenter, I close the fermenter to keep nasties out, and take the kettle into the kitchen and rinse hop residue and break material and whatnot out of it. I'll fill it with 4 gallons of water, toss in some PBW, and let it begin soaking while I return to aerating the wort and pitching the yeast.
I do all-grain in a cooler mash tun. I have a single brew kettle (8 gallons) and a smaller 5-gallon kettle in which I gather the wort as it runs out of the mash tun.
I heat the mash tun pre-heat water on my stove (a gallon). I dump the boiling water in the tun, close it up, and it pre-heats which is important to hitting my target temp.
I don't have any pumps or such; I've been tempted but i can't see any great advantage to them with my setup (5 gallons). With a larger setup I'm sure they'd be valuable. I read the stories of plate chillers being hard to clean or clogging, and I'm not going to go there. I think a counterflow would be better, but what I'm using is an immersion chiller. Others may have found ways to make that work, but given that it's 60-seconds to rinse off the immersion chiller and put it away, I don't see any time savings to be had with a plate chiller.
I've found the most efficient way for me to move water is not pumps and hoses; it's a pitcher I use to dip the water from the kettle into the mash tun. I can move a gallon at first, and as the water level drops in the boil kettle, less. It takes me about 5 times to move the water to the mash tun, then I pick up the boil kettle (which by that time has maybe a gallon in it) and just dump it in the mash tun.
I see this is kind of rambly, but I'm done w/ break and I'm back at it. The key IMO is eliminating wasted steps, moving things more than once, cleaning as you go. Might sound like a pain but once it becomes a habit it's no more difficult than scratching your nose.