[kevmo1965]

First of all, welcome to our community.
Pick out a ROM you wish to load and place it on your SD card. You can place it in the root or in a folder.
Power down the device. Hold down the Volume Down key and then press Power.
A white screen will come up, using the volume up and down keys select recovery and press the power key to select. The device will then restart and boot into recovery.
In the menu you want to clear the cache before you flash. Using the same way to navigate with the keys select "wipe data/factory reset".
After the device is done you will come back to the same menu.
Now select "Install zip from sdcard" and press the power button. In the next menu select "choose zip from sdcard" and again press the power button. From here you navigate to where you placed the zip and select it. A menu will come up with a lot of "no" choices and only one yes choice. Select the Yes and the device will do the rest.
After its done, select "reboot system now" and you have just flashed a new ROM.
To backup or restore in recovery, select "nandroid" then either "backup" or "restore" in the next menu and follow the prompts.