Doug & Patty,
We just redid our kitchen this year. I had the same quandry as you about counter tops and explored everything from concrete to stone to stainless to man made stone (Silestone, Caeserstone, Technistone & Zodiaq, which are all the same thing made under license from the patent holder). Ultimately, we went with Silestone, as the variety of colors surpassed what was available in nature.
We initially though about a cobalt blue, but found a fire engine red that we love.
It sounds llike your pricing is exceptional. I went through a half dozen bids and none locally were less than about $110 per square foot when everything was included. We finally went with e-counters.com and were very pleased. For our "tier" of Silestone, it worked out to $65 per square foot, plus things like cutouts ($300 for undermount sink, $20 per hole for the faucet, $40 each for outlets), and bullnose edging ($29 per lineal foot).
What I found is that counters are a lot like a base price car - the initial advertised price is about 60-70% of the real cost.
Disclaimer - I have on financial or other interest in e-counters.com, I'm just really cheap and want to get a good value. The weird thing about e-counters and Home Depot, Lowes etc, is that they all use the same "factory authorized fabricators" as listed on the products web sites. They then mark up their bids to make a profit and everybody is happy. When I had the local guys bid the project they were higher than HD and everybody else.
I really wanted to deal direct with the local guy, but they were all $2,000-3,000 higher. Go figure.