Hi Brian

You may want to run the upgrade advisor to see how compatible your existing
database is with SQL 2005

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=1470E86B-7E05-4322-A677
-95AB44F12D75&displaylang=en

Whether you decide to upgrade through SQL Express or not is a decission you
may want to make, although there is probably little benefit. Migration will
allow you to test the upgrade process before going live and to iron out any
problems before a final cut over

http://www.microsoft.com/sql/editions/express/upgrade.mspx gives some advice
for upgrading. You can detach the database from a SQL 2000 (msde) instance
and re-attach it to a SQL 2005 instance or restore a backup of your database
and restore that on SQL 2005. To take full benefit of SQL 2005 you would need
to make sure that the compatibility mode is set to 9 (SQL 2005). You may find
it useful to rebuild indexes and update statistics as well.

John