Thank you for all your responses, I am determined to do the best I can. I guess I will purchase the Canon 17-55 as I need a wide angle lens anyway. I am relatively new to photography, just getting a Rebel XTI about a year and a half ago and the flash just recently so in the next month or so I will be doing crash courses in people photography. Now I could kick myself for not purchasing the new 40D but I wanted to hold out until next year to see what the 50D has to offer,I will check out rental prices but if its too cost prohibitive I'll just have to make due with the XTI.
My plans were to have a bunch of 4 x 6's printed out and just one framed 8 x 10 and give them the disk of the rest of the photos, naturally I will take out any bad ones beforehand.
Regarding photoshop....well...all I have is Paint Shop Pro 7 and am self taught on that. So I won't be doing tons of editing on the photos, just the normal levels, sharpening and such. I've already explained this to my niece and she understands.
Thank you all so much for the info, I really appreciate it
Connie