What is/are the best free tool/tools for editing my videos?
You can download a FREE 30 trail version of Vegas Pro 11 from Sony.

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/download/trials/vegaspro

I've have Vegas Pro 10 and I have used these features: Stabilize, Convert resolution down to 720p, and convert (render) to MP4.

I never convert resolution up, it just looks terrible (see my comments above).

By "Crop to Anamorphic", I am assuming you mean to convert 4:3 to 16:9, I have not tried this with Vegas as all my originals are already 16:9 HD. So you might want to google for that part.

If you go this route search YouTube for tutorials on each item as it will speed up your learning curve considerably.

Caution: if you want to take a 4:3 SD video and make it into a 720p 16:9 HD it's just gonna look terrible. Why? Because you are asking the software to expand the resolution, this never looks good. It's ok to reduce resolution say go from 1920 X 1080 and step it down to 720p, that's just fine, but when you try to go the other way you are asking the software to essentially make up material that is not there.