Ms. Nichelle, if you still need assistance changing your avatar, perhaps this may help you and/or someone else:
1) On left margin of your monitor screen look for Main Menu.
2) Click on User CP, then click on Edit Avatar.
3) At top center will be your current avatar.
4) Scroll down to Custom Avatar box at the bottom.
5) Click the gray rectangle called Choose File, if it is your own picture file, and select your new avatar.
6) Finally, click the Save Changes rectangle at very bottom of screen.
I hope this helps.
Thank you hump. I just realized now that the link I linked to was just to the avatar transformation page. I thought they might of been linking to a tutorial which is not the case. I do apologize to the OP.
This thread could be a sticky somewhere! First, someone opens the page I linked to getting to the change avatar page, then they open up another tab to read the steps you laid out, genius!