Hi Shannon,
I just looked up your scope on Amazon, and I think I see your problem. It ships with three rather high magnification eyepieces for the size of the telescope, and the mounting was reviewed as being quite unsteady. With a 900mm focal length, the eyepieces give magnifications of 72x, 100x and 225x. The 225x is probably unusable on the supplied mount, and 72x is already quite high for the size of telescope. If the eyepieces are of poor quality (the ones that shipped with my Celestron 130mm reflector were rubbish), then your view may be less than impressive. But don't despair! For now, I'd stick with using the 12.5mm (72x) to try and find objects, and see if you can get views of any of the brightest deep sky objects, say in the Milky Way near the Southern Cross. Your challenge will be to learn some constellations and see if you can find your way to some of the objects (if you don't already know). Mars and Saturn are both in the evening sky at the moment, though you won't see very much on Mars with your scope I suspect (Mars is tiny), but the rings of Saturn are definitely there for the taking, and truly magical the first time you see them in a telescope! A pair of binoculars, if you have them, can help you identify what your telescope is pointing at by giving you a low magnification view of that part of the sky.
The 12" scope you've identified is a good big one, and could lead to a lifetime of observing all sorts of deep sky objects, quite apart from the Moon and planets. Aperture is ultimately what matters most for nearly all astronomy, and 12" is a good bit of aperture! !t will take a bit of learning your way about the sky and learning to find interesting stars and deep sky objects, and you should be prepared to be frustrated at first. This takes time but is incredibly rewarding in the end.
If you don't want to spend big bucks right away, the best quick improvement to your little telescope would be a low-power wide field eyepiece. With a focal ratio of 7.8, your telescope would support a 32mm or 40mm low power eyepiece, for example this simple one from Bintel for $39:
http://www.bintel.com.au/Eyepieces-a...oductview.aspx
That will give you a much wider field of view and a much higher chance of locating objects, and of relating what you see in the telescope to what you can see with your eyes and binoculars. It would turn your little scope into a little rich field telescope! Objects like Eta Carinae nebula, the LMC, the Jewel Box and Omega Centauri could be fun to look at with this! Adding a small finder (e.g. a 6x30 sold at Bintel for about $50) might also help - I did this with my 130mm Celestron and it made it an awful lot easier to use as I could locate objects much, much more easily. I had to drill two holes into the tube to mount the finder but it was well worth it!
Other advice is to find a local astronomy club, go to a star party, and look through other people's scopes, small or large, and chat to them. You'll get more of a feel for different telescopes and perhaps a better idea of what's good value for you as well.
Oh, and
! Clear skies!