Target path issues, multiple nested mc's

I have a movie clip with a total of 15 nested movie clips within it. My goal is to be able to scroll through these 15 mc's, they're thumbnails. Before I nested all the individual movie clips into one, they expanded when rolled over. Now that they are nested, they don't expand when rolled over. I'm new to flash and am using this project to learn as I go. I understand the concept of target paths, but can't quite seem to apply them. I'm assuming that's my conflict.

The main movie clip is called container_mc, with an instance name of container. Each nested movie clip's instance name is button1 - button15, movie clips named buttonclip1 - buttonclip15. The expand actions are in my main timeline, with individual actions applied to each button.

Here is the code in the main timeline:

_root.numButtons=15;
function Expand(buttonRate, buttonName, buttonSize) {
if (buttonName.scale==1) {
setProperty(buttonName, _xscale, buttonName._xscale+=((buttonSize*buttonRate)-(buttonName._xscale*buttonRate))*(buttonRate/10));
setProperty(buttonName, _yscale, buttonName._yscale+=((buttonSize*buttonRate)-(buttonName._yscale*buttonRate))*(buttonRate/10));
}
if (buttonName.scale==0) {
setProperty(buttonName, _xscale, buttonName._xscale+=((buttonRate*100)-(buttonName._xscale*buttonRate))*(buttonRate/10));
setProperty(buttonName, _yscale, buttonName._yscale+=((buttonRate*100)-(buttonName._yscale*buttonRate))*(buttonRate/10));
}
}

And the code for each button:

onClipEvent (enterFrame) {
_root.Expand(2,_root.button1,115);
}

and

on (rollOver, dragOver) {
this.scale = 1;
for (i=1; i<=_root.numButtons; i++) {
_root["button"+i].swapDepths(1);
}
this.swapDepths(2);
}
on (rollOut, dragOut) {
this.scale = 0;
}


Any help would be greatly appreciated, I've tried everything I could think of with no results.