Thanks for the help! I think I got it!
Now that I look at it, I can access forum topics through the widget, but I still can’t link to the forum directory from my menu…
Thanks so much! Works like a charm!! Except now.. for some reason I can’t get bbpress forums to show up… oh well! Back to work!
Thanks again for doing this and all the help, I really appreciate everything
Oh haha (a) please! Thanks so much!
Well I’ve tried goin about and creating the separate header, sidebar and footer files but I honestly have no idea what code I need to add and where? Does anyone have a clue what I need to add to make these work?
How far away I the 1.7 release? 
I found pastebin, so here are links to the coding for my page.php, sidebar.php, header.php, and footer.php. I would really appreciate any help analyzing this code, and maybe a tip or two on how to integrate buddypress into the theme. Thanks again, so much!
Sidebar.php http://pastebin.com/NGgq5fXn
footer.php http://pastebin.com/kBQnbTmD
header.php http://pastebin.com/Efrw00Yx
page.php http://pastebin.com/TEz6LxWK
