Hi catlady, welcome to the Board.
It seems that maybe your picture editing program is using your resizing details to perform a sort of "cropping" process.
If it is a problem with resizing, try this simple, free internet routine:
http://www.picresize.com/ and just experiment with the dimensions (start with, say, 700 or 800 pixels for maximum width or height) until the result is below 125Kb.