Help with lens purchase

Pardon my total ignorance. I wished I would have taken a photography course years ago. Its time I did away with my film SLR and move up to DSLR. I have been eyeing the Canon Rebel XTi. That was the easy part. Now I can't seem to decide what lens to get. My primary purpose is to take people and landscape portraits as well as pictures of my kids playing sports. Its important that I can take a fairly closeup of my kid playing football while I'm out in the bleachers.

I'm under $1000 to $1500 budget for lenses. And my feeling is that its better to have a fairly decent picture closeup than a great one of my kid faraway. Would something with a focal length up to 400mm do the job? If not would it be cheaper to add a 2X telephoto lens extender to such a lens than to step up to a 600mm?

And for everything else would something like a 24-105mm wide angle lens be a good choice?

Also how important is it to have a lens with image stabalizer? Does that mean when using a telephoto lens with LS that you dont need a tripod?

Sorry for all the questions. I have lot to learn. Thanks for your help.

Brent

Too much all at once will be very confusing and won't help you at all in the learning process.

My suggestion is that you buy the camera with its kit lens, probably a 18-55mm or thereabouts and start of by getting to know what that combination will do.

After you have familiarised yourself with the one lens then you should know whethere you need a longer lens (telephoto) or a wider angle. Telephotos will benefit from Image Stabilisation as you will be able to use slower shutter speeds than would otherwise be possible.

Hope that helps!

John