I love natural light too and if you put in lots of drawers in the lowers, I don't think you'll miss having fewer upper cabinets. I recommend doing a long rectangular island rotated 90%. As some people don't care for the island seating to be all lined up, you could either do a curved radius of the outside edge or line up 3 seats and put the 4th seat perpendicular to it.

Your current layout appears woefully short on continuous counterspace. It does not have a long enough span to set down a large pan and bowl and plate up 4 dinner plates.

Or to set down a mixer and 2 cookie sheets.

Where do you anticipate eating on a daily basis? Your kitchen is quite large, but does not have the functionality it should due to most of its square footage being walkways.

If that were my space to work with, I would rotate the island 90 degrees, make it larger, not have the prep sink centered, but have it across from the fridge, have the island surface all the same height, have the "work" side of the island rectangular, and perhaps do a curve on the seating side of the island.

Or do all of that with no curve and no stool seating, but do a step-down counter off the island with 2 chairs on the short end by the stairs.

We will most likely eat breakfast at the bar, lunch could be either at the bar or dining room depending on how many of us are home, and dinner always in the dining room. I was thinking about eating at the bar and having a view out the back windows....but I think it does work better for food prep being turned 90 degrees. I modified the island in the photo below, does this look better?

Here is a link that might be useful: floor plan

I like the new island, seating on 2 sides is much better imo.

How many cooks and helpers? Moving the DW b/w the sink and range may not be a good idea if one would be prepping b/w the sink and range, and one tries to load/unload DW. I think cabs on the left of DW and island can be sufficient for plate, glass storage, now that you turned the island 90 degrees. I guess there won't be any cabs b/w the sink and the DW as shown in the drawing.

Any reason to have a wide space b/w the fridge and range? If not it may be better to have a cab b/w the corner cab and the range.

Much better!