Moving vertex points

So awhile back I became too frustrated with blender and dropped it. Not a real big loss since I’m not very good (yet). But a day or so ago I decided to return to blender, I downloaded the lastest version onto my new computer and fired up my old project.
So the geometry on this project is just plane bad. I think it because I was modeling with subsurf on. I have been trying to fix this problem but everytime I try to move a vertext point it pulls like half the mesh with it. And I think it bcause of this circle that appears everytime I I grab a point. I dont’t know what its called so I couldn’t really search the forums about it. All I really want to know is how I make the darn thing smaller. Assuming thats the problem to begin with.

thanks,
EB

That is called proportional editing. Checkout the wiki for the hows and whys of it: http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Manual/Proportional_Edit

press “o” to turn it on/off

Thanks a tun guys