Help--what SHOULD I have done?

[bkford]

I took some photos at my son's house (Super Bowl), using the Intelligent Auto setting. Usually that setting works pretty well for me, for indoors casual candid shot, better than some of my attempts to go non-auto. But the pictures last night were unacceptable. Attached is one of them AFTER I applied Auto Correct in MS Picture Manager--it was even worse before that, and I didn't think to save the picture before auto correcting. The flash did fire.

WAIT--I thought I was posting this in DSLR, not point and shoot--this was taken with Canon EOS Rebel T3i. Can't figure out how to move this myself. Sorry.