I'd second staying east. You can drive west to do the really good dives but there's not a lot of dining choices once you leave town heading west. Also it's kind of quiet at night.
The other thing is that to find a house on the water probably means staying on that side also. The west is more vertical so a lot of the properties are ocean front - but not necessarily waterfront. Many are 30-60' or so higher on a cliff. One of the bigger kids activities on Curacao is the Seaquarium so it makes sense to be near it also. There's also the Ostrich Farm but it's not near much of anything so a good morning excursion.
Try to find something in the Jan Thiel-Caracasbaai area. Maybe as far east as Santa Barbara if you don't mind a few minute drive (daily) back to "town" for dinner. There's quite a few houses beach front/ocean front in the Caracasbaai area. Some are bayfront. I don't think there's a lot of food options there but Santa Barbara Resort is the former Hyatt Regency...
There's about 6 shore dives nearby - the Tugboat, Directors Bay, Jan Thiel, Pierbaai - a couple in between I'm forgetting. No dive operator at the Tugboat or Directors Bay. For boat diving there's an Ocean Encounters at Santa Barbara resort and their main shop adjacent to the Seaquarium. They don't support solo diving - even with a card - so... Curious2Dive also does many (all?) of those sites as escorted shore dives.
From that area there's several mid-island sites about 10-15mins. drive away. Drive back towards town then go north over the bridge and past the airport before turning back towards the water. Varsenbaai, Snake Bay, Porto Mari, Cas Abao, all would be in that range. My friends wife used to guide on Curacao - she said Snake Bay was one of her favorites - we didn't have time...
If you wanted to do the far west sites, Playa's Lagun, Jeremi, the "Gnip's" - ending in Westpunt for Playa Kalki/Alice in Wonderland - that's about an hour drive. Nice thing about Curacao for the family is that most of the better dive sites are also on nice beaches - most with on-site operators with at least a snack bar, many rent all the beach toys also. Almost every site also has a dive operator on site for tank rental - one that doesn't is Playa Jeremi - but Discover Dive at Playa Lagun is a few mins. south.
Another option might be the Dive Bus but with 1000+ dives, you might be bored at some of their sites since they also work with resort divers locally. Talk to Mark/Suzy, maybe they'd be willing to convey you to the site and turn you loose to dive your own profile - IDK. Or match you with a like buddy. Some sites have that option - parts of the the Carpile wrecks are at/exceed rec limits. And there's others. My buddies did 148' at Varsenbaai once while most of us stayed around 80' - there's a pontoon boat wreck at that depth that's a good turn point to the east. Even the kids might like it, there's a small family beach there and turtles live in 6' of water just off the beach - the operator said they've been there for years.
East of town the Tugboat is in 20' of water, the pier nearby is equally shallow, the wall around the point drops beyond 130'. The pier is only divable if there's no ship tied up there or working nearby.
Quite a few sites are listed here - some are a little out of date.
Scuba Shore Diving Site Listing for: Curacao, ABC Islands
ex: Sunset Waters at the Airplane Wreck closed and the resort was leveled. The "wreck" is the cockpit/wings of a small Cessna just outside the breakwater in 40' so not exactly worth a special effort. If the kids wanted to wade around inside the breakwater that might be fun for them - they'd need surf walkers or boots though. Afaik there's nothing there now - except maybe some private houses on the hill above - IDK if they were part of the resort or not.
Not to be confused with Eldon's Plane Wreck off Playa Kalki - which really is a boat dive anyway - unless you find someone with scooters who knows where it is.
Airplane wreck at Playa Kalki, Curacao - YouTube
Boat dives you may want to do: Watamula - Go West Diving in Westpunt does it twice a week. See if they do Mushroom Forest on the same day - that would be a double that hits two of the signature dives in that area. On the east side, anything around East Point is in the Marine Park and only done by boat. The Superior Producer is also easier by boat - Ocean Encounters does some of those sites - Caribbean Sea Sports at the Marriott in Piscadera Bay does the Producer once a week also.
Also the farthest east diving is at Klein Curacao - several operators go out there and there used to be a larger combo beach/snorkel/dive boat that some booked also. That might be a good family day - there's a shallow wreck beached off Klein the kids might like to see. And some sort of day use facility - I've not been there. Except for the Tugboat we dove/stayed west so I'm not as familiar with the east side sites.
Landhuis Daniel was recommended by our apt. mgr's as a nicer place for dinner one day. It's on the main road slightly past the airport so no ocean view. We also liked the Ribs Factory in Salinja. For local cuisine, there's Surf & Turf on Pierbaaai (I think) Beach. It's a casual outdoor smaller place, I'm pretty sure they went down to a trap at waters edge and killed the lobster we ate. We mostly grabbed food where we could between dives so I don't have any other recommendations. We did have a nice meal on the beach at the Marriott in PBay our last night - moved the table right onto the sand. I don't remember the quality of the food though.
hth, it's about 3 years old now so things may have changed. Find all this and more:
www.curacao.com
