Vb.net – Why does a button control need to be clicked twice

I've got a web application working using VB and Ajax. I'm using updatepanels to avoid the irritating "flicker" on postbacks to the server.

I would like to have a button control defined within the updatepanel itself (tried moving it outside and got some catastrophic error, so left it there) that makes the current panel not visible and a sibling panel visible. This works with the exception that the button must be clicked twice. Not double clicked, but clicked once than clicked again.

In setting breakpoints I discovered the code behind that's attached to the button is actually being executed on the first click, but the panels don't switch as expected. If I click the same button OR worse yet, a different button, the expected behavior of the second panel appearing occurs. However, with the second button being clicked there's an unwanted bonus of a third panel being displayed, the third panel being made visible due to the second button being clicked.

I'm assuming this behavior is due to the updatepanel and its Ajax nature. Is there a way to avoid the second click? Am I misusing the updatepanel? I really wanted to use a modal popup (right out of the AjaxToolKit) but had problems with posting back the data so I opted for this approach. Any insights, assistance, even criticism would be welcome as this has plagued me long enough. Thanks