ActionScript 3.0 :: Navigation Blurs Out/in Background Images

I have a simple single main timeline for the website with 6 navigation buttons. Each button sending the playhead to a label keyframe (the site has 6 'pages'). I converted 6 photos to movie clips and added one to each of the 6 labels as a full page background. To each movieclip photo, I have added a fade in blur using one of the FLASHeff effects so when a nav button is clicked, the background fades/blurs in, I have given each background 20 frames to allow the blur to fully complete.
 
Now all that works as expected... but now the fun begins... what I would like to do is that when a navigation button is clicked, whichever of the 6 backgrounds is currently showing will fade/blur out first before the new background photo fades in. I could do this with 36 (the total combination of transitions with 6 photos and 6 buttons). A bit of an ugly solution!
 
Here is the code I have for the buttons:
 
teamBt.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_DOWN, mouseTeamHandler);function mouseTeamHandler(event:MouseEvent):void { gotoAndPlay("team");}
 
My question is: Is there a more elegant and dare I say, sexy actionscript 3 way to do all this and hopfully still be able to use flasheff for the blur effect?
 
I had better get up to speed using actionscript 3 to save myself further forum embarrassment.