Me on a Soapbox and...LESSON ONE.

*disclaimer- this is LOOOONNNGG. I'm sorry. Read until you fall asleep and pick it back up after your afternoon Diet Coke.

First and foremost...I think every mom should have and know how to use a good camera (a DSLR...keep reading).
I think we deserve to catch the moments we want in the ways we want. Seriously, it's our WORK.
We work hard.
I work hard.
And I want to document it.
I invest a butt-load of time on my kids. I take my pictures for ME.
It's a short ride with these darling little pipsqueaks and I don't want to look back at my pictures in 20 years and think "EEHHH!" and have the best pictures I have of my kids be of them in some stiff studio pose with their hand perfectly under their chin and head tilted just right. I'm not going to be saying at that time, "Oh, I love how my little girl always laid just like that on her tummy with her head cocked to the side and her feet crossed behind her. That was just like her."
It will be a cute picture with almost zilch personality. Basically, this is what your face looked like when you were 4, honey.
This is what drove me to photography. I wanted to escape that stinking HOT JCPenny studio with my 20 minutes of allotted time with some teenager rolling her tongue obnoxiously (think the highest pitch "RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!" you can) and trying to make my kid smile by tickling his nose with a pink feather duster. ECHHHH. And then she'd miss the smile EVERY TIME. I wanted to go, "JUST GIVE ME THE DANG CAMERA AND GET OUT OF THE WAY!"
Seriously.
Can you get more torturous? No wonder I was a stressed-out, sweaty, disgusting mess by the time we left. No wonder the baby hated it and cried and had a red face for every picture.

Using a DSLR really doesn't take that long to get used to and you'll love the pictures you get. I'm going to do my best to convince you to get one (and I don't even work for a camera company!)
I ***HATED*** the crappy pictures I would get from my p&s. It drove me to get my first DSLR. It's a great investment.

*note- from here on in the post is all about using a DSLR. If you have NO interest in this, even after reading my soapbox section, stop here :)

Alright- the responses for photography 101 were kind of pitiful. But nevertheless, here I go...
The first thing you need to know about using a DSLR (Digital Single Lens Reflex) camera is that its kind of like playing a game. The goal of the game is to have a good picture. What makes a good picture? One that isn't too dark or light (and then the creative elements, which we'll get to later). This was the weirdest thing for me to get used to- that I had to manipulate my camera to get a good "exposure". I would want to catch a moment and quickly pick up my camera a shoot away then look at the pictures in the play-back and they were all pitch black.
All little point and shoot (ps) cameras do the calculating for you. They take into account all the light coming through the lens and calculate what settings it needs to use to get a good exposure. Most SLR cameras have both automatic settings (like sports, portrait, macro...) and manual settings, where you manipulate the settings to get the exposure you want. There are three of these "settings". They are:
1) shutter speed
2) aperture
3) ISO
If you want to learn photography, learn these things and learn them well. Understanding what they do and how they affect how your photo will come out is crucial. (for a great book check out "understanding exposure".)
So first we will tackle...hmm...I guess we'll go with shutter speed.
All three of these things make up the formula for a properly exposed photo. If you change one you are going to have to change another. Shutter speed is how long your shutter opens to let the light fall on the sensor. It is expressed in fractions of seconds like 1/125th of a second. Or 1/8000 of a second (or anywhere in between). Or it can be opened for 1-30 seconds. When it's open longer, like 1/125 rather than 1/250, it lets in more light. If its open too long you'll get a "blown out" or over-exposed picture. Sometimes it's just completely white. Not a good picture. If its open too short you get a dark or black picture. Yuck. And then your moment is lost. And no one likes that. BUT you can also use shutter speed to convey motion. Opening the shutter longer results in blur if something is in motion. Opening it a very short amount of time (as in 1/500) freezes motion. Here are two examples, properly exposed but using different shutter speeds.
Here the shutter is open longer, resulting in blur as I moved the camera along with the movement of her swing (called "panning"). This was taken at 1/60 of a second.

Here she was still moving but the shutter froze the motion and I didn't move the camera while shooting. This was taken at 1/500 of a second.

Get the difference?
K, let's move along to aperture. You've probably noticed the pictures you take with your p&s don't have that beautiful background blur which sets DSLRs apart. The aperture refers to the size of the hole letting the light hit the censor. Depending on the lens you use, your aperture can either open way UP (a SMALL number, like 1.4), letting in LOTS of light, or narrow way down (a large number, like 22), letting in a little bit of CONCENTRATED light . Think of it like your eyes when you squint cuz you aren't wearing your glasses. The more you squint, the more the light is concentrated on your "censor" and you can see clearer from you to wherever you are looking. If I was going to take a picture of the beautiful mountains with the orange groves in front and wanted it all in focus, I would choose a small aperture (written as an f-stop like f/22) to get everything in focus. This is what most p&s cameras do. Then don't have wide apertures. There are several things that can affect the amount of blur, but usually if you want MORE blurred background you LOWER your aperture (or OPEN it). Here are examples:
This was taken at f/2.8, the widest this particular lens will go. LOADS of blur before and after the focus point. (btw-sorry about the sucky pics. But they get the point across)


This one was taken at f/5.0 (not as blurred before and after focus point)


And this a 9.0. (clearest front to back)


I could have gone all the way to f/22 but that gives a leetle teeny opening for light, which means the shutter has to be open longer to let in more light and the movement of my hands would result in "camera shake" and blurry pictures (ever turn off the flash on your p&s and it gives you like a little hand that's saying you'll get camera shake? that's why! the shutter will be open longer so set it down on something or put it on a tripod for the picture)
The last thing that affects your exposure is ISO. In film cameras you'd have to change your film in dark-light situations to get a decent picture. Now it takes about 2 seconds to change on your camera. Your p&s even has an ISO setting.
I once read it explained as the amount of worker bees you have working for you to gather the information the lens is seeing. The higher the number, the faster the information is gathered. That's a good thing, right?? NOPE. With a faster gathering, each pixel doesn't have the time it needs to get all the color, so your camera kindof "guesses" what some pixels should be and you get more and more grain as you get higher ISOs. I discovered this the hard way. I took a bunch of pictures of my sister-in-law at ISO 800 and got them on the computer and was like, 'WHAT THA!!" because they were unclear. So the lower the ISO (100 is good), the better. But then you have less worker bees and therefore have to have a slower shutter speed or a wide open aperture (or both!) to let enough light in to make a good exposure. And sometimes that slower shutter speed (usually anything under 1/100 of a second) will give you camera shake. So you have to make the decision of what to do- up the ISO or open up the aperture (or add light-use flash, open a door/window...)
Making a good exposure balances all these things. The picture of my neice with on the swing with the blur was taken at a f/13 and ISO 100 because I had so much light coming in because of the longer shutter speed that I had to narrow the aperture and lower the ISO. The other picture of her had a fast shutter speed=less light=open the aperture (f/3.2) and up the ISO to 200. Each lighting situation has a different formula. But as long as you are in the same lighting (like shade or indoors or bright light) you can just shoot without changing your settings. But once you go indoors from being outside you'll have to change.
So that's it. Now you are a pro, right?? Oh, one more thing...your camera has a light meter inside of it which tells you pretty accurately when your shutter speed (ss), aperture, and ISO are making good exposures. It's not just trial and error. You can see when looking through the viewfinder (yes, old-school style) if it's going to be over or under-exposed and then you can fix it from there. So you aren't completely on your own.
Good luck. Let me know what you think. Shall we continue to lesson 2??