Mc as a button

ok so i went through the tutorial here and it seems easy enough but i am haveing a proble before i even get to start the AS. backgroung info:i have a navigation that has 4 menu items and beside the text there is a box, each a diffrent color ie. “home” with a red box to the right. the idea is to have a rollover state where you rollover “home” and the red box tweens with the height static but the width expands to the left covering the text. buttt the text and the boxes are seperate graphics because the text fades in and the boxes move in from the bottom.

problem:so it seems like all that is fairly acheivable if i use the tutorial here but my problem is that i cant figure out how to have a “hit area” with the MC as a button. i can make the boxes the movie clip or the text but if i choose both of them and then convert to a singular symbol the shift slightly. so if i do this to all four menu items they all move in diffrent directions slightly. sloppy. i also tried to copy each text and corisponding box and paste them into their own layer and then convert to mc but they wont line up perfectly either.

any ides on how i can fix this or make it all over again but eaiser so that i can incorporate all my elements. IM STUMPED!

thanks in advance