I would like to share with you a bit of my own experience. Maybe it will help a little.
My one greatest regret is learning to lipread. Now I do it all the time, and I can't shut it off. It's a significant drain on my energy, and when there are a lot of mouths moving, it gives me a roaring headache within minutes. The one good thing about it is that it gave my family time to catch up learning to sign.
When I lost my hearing, I learned to sign and become comfortable enough to declare myself fluent incredibly rapidly. I learned SEE, previously mentioned "Signing Exact English." I chose this because I knew it would be faster for my family because it does not require them to learn a new language. The most accurate book I've found on SEE is (ironically) Signing Exact English by Gerilee Gustason / Esther Zawolkow. If you search "Signing Exact English" on Amazon.com, you'll find it right away along with a couple others, but this one gets my vote.
Learn to fingerspell first. I had an advantage on this one. When I was in high school, I took an ASL course. Over years of neglect, I forgot a lot of what I learned, but one thing I kept up on was fingerspelling, which proved to be a very handy tool.
Also, my personal suggestion, if you ever intend to go on and learn ASL in the future (which will make you more comfortable in the Deaf community)..
JUST in case you're one of the 1 in 6 billion people who have a problem adapting to the "me" concept in ASL, let me suggest that when you learn to sign "I" in SEE, learn the "me" sign instead for both "me" and "I" .. that's the word, not the letter. This will allow your brain to distinguish between the letter and the sign better. I have a problem with that, but NOBODY understands it, but I just thought I'd mention that JUST in case you were against all odds like me in that respect.
Once you've mastered fingerspelling, get a list of the most commonly used words in the English language, and try to order them in the order they are learned by native English speakers if you can, and make short lists of them in that order (10-15 words per list), then learn one list per day. Sounds daunting, but just practice TODAY's list over and over for half an hour, then go through all the signs you've learned, and then you're done for the day. When you're by yourself, practice signing out your thoughts. Fingerspell the words you don't know how to sign rather than skipping them. Practice with your family. Your kids will take to signing like it's nothing. Encourage them to take ASL classes in school when they're old enough. It won't hurt them a bit. And you'll probably be learning ASL by then anyway, so you can help them with their homework.
Now you're set for life. Be patient with your family, your wife, especially. They'll probably be a little slower than you are at learning to sign. This is just because signing has just become your primary language, and your brain won't be fooled by you telling it otherwise. It will absorb that language like it's starving for it. Don't worry, your family will catch on.
Oh, somebody put a list of websites for ASL resources .. my personal favourite is the one listed as lifeprint.