J.S.
Hey Y.! :-)
I read the other responses & have checked out some of the sites as well, they are all really helpful sites to get you started.
I will tell you that you are not alone in not knowing where to begin. The first thing to get your scrapping moving along is to decide HOW you want to organize your albums...
For example, so you want to have separate albums for each child? for each occasion? for each vacation? for every school year? for every year collectively as a family?
Personally when I first started to get all of my stuff together, I decided it would be best to just put it all together and do yearly albums, BUT if you take as many pics as I do, you may find that the book will just be too big once you add all of the pages! (lol)
But I don't know how many pics you have. So once you decide HOW you want to organize, you need to organize the pics! Put them in the order that you want to scrap them, decide which ones you definately want to print, which ones you MAY want to print, & "the rest", and edit them before you print them, that way you will have less cropping and less waste! (money & pics)
One other awesome idea that someone suggested was digital scrapping. These books are AWESOME! AND they make really great gifts for Grandparents! I have sent out 6 over the last year and they are ALWAYS well received! My mom carries it around with her for the first week to show everyone (it's an 8 1/2 x 11 inch hard cover book).
There are lots of places out there, but make sure that you compare amt of pages, quality, & binding, they aren't all the same. One I would NOT recommend is Picaboo, personally I just found it complicated to work with. Snapfish & Creative Memories have free software and templates available, I prefer CM (of course I am a consultant, but I'm not trying to recruit you ;-) but Snapfish is easy to work with and I've ordered from them before as well. (Actually I get ALL of my printed pics from them b/c it is great quality, cheap, & VERY fast shipping!)
Someone suggested a Creative Memories Rep that can give you more info, CM is GREAT for starters especially because they have kits that include everything you need to complete a whole album. They have a digital organization tool that is great for organizing photos before you put them into an album, you can also categorize your photos into multiple folders without affecting the photo size and hard drive space(and of course the digital scrapbooks). If you want to check out my site, I can send you the link ;-) but I don't want you to think I am just trying to sell you my stuff :-) I will tell you though to find a CM Consultant near you because generally CMCs are in the business because they ENJOY helping others get started, no pressure. Looking at websites of products definately won't be as helpful as an actual person helping you get sorted out. :-) I hope that this helps you!
J.