Menu on Webpage

Hello, I am using Flash 5 and this is probably a basic Flash question, any help would be great.

I am building an all Flash site with a ‘slide-out’ menu and can’t figure out how to place everything else on the site. My question is should this menu be on the bottom layers and build the rest of the movie on top of it? Or should I keep the menu as its own .swf and then place a blank MC to load the other movies into? I have attached the menu file so you can check it out.

The trouble I’m having is that the Menu I built has a few stop actions in it to extend and collapse the menu bar. However, when the published movie plays, it stops at these stop actions and does not play the rest of the movie…any suggestions? thanks, dave.