Check out your local Community papers for folks selling their equipment at the end of the season. They might be moving up to a tent trailer and want to sell a tent, stove, etc. The sporting goods stores may have some of that stuff on sale, though you're in the warmer climate, so they may not have to reduce it to clear it out for winter items! LOL!
We tent camped until our 3rd child was about a year old. Our last camping trip with the tent was when she was 9 mths. old, and I realized it was too much like WORK having to haul all the food from the van to the table and back after meals.
We bought a tent trailer, and used it for about 8 yrs. The older boys got too old, and we got too busy to haul it around anymore, but it was fun while we had it! It was a Coleman Williamsburg with a small built in shower, which was wonderful when the kids were small, and a porta-potty (which we never used). A couple of years after we got the trailer, we found a screened porch that matched, and attached to, the trailer! It made for a great sleeping area for the older boys and kept us from having to break the dining table down every night. The trailer had a full bed on one end and a queen bed on the other, and could be hooked up to electricity and water in a campground. For parks without those utilities, you could use a marine battery and there was an 18 gallon water tank. The best part was that it had a 3 burner stove and a furnace. You may not need the furnace, but it came in handy for us during the Columbus day long weekend trips. There was once that it started snowing while we were breaking it down after the weekend.
But we enjoyed camping with the kids. It was a fairly inexpensive way to travel and see lots of neat places.