yes, all of that was tried. I finally took off the categories block on the home page and made my own blocks with each individual category and sub categories. Then I looked at the site and went to one of the product tabs which still had the old category block and guess what, the old category blocked worked. When I clicked on a parent category, it showed the sub categories just fine...go figure. I have no idea why it changed, but everything is fine now. Thanks again for all of the help.