make menu not mess up my page lay-out - html

Question

So i've got a drop-down menu on some elements in the middle of my page. This menu works with purely html and css. Now without any hover the menu items look like this: http://prntscr.com/3es3n8.
With hover however it looks like this: http://prntscr.com/3es3y2.
Now the hover itself works fine and i can style the child elements just fine. My question would be if it was possible for the child element to actually hover over the other items. I know z-index is supposed to do something like this but im not sure how to implement that. I'll try to post as much code as possible but the site is already in ModX.
I'm sorry about all the extra code but the general idea of the situation should be there. http://jsfiddle.net/C8sBp/1/
<div class="row">
<div class="small-12 large-12 columns">
<ul class="small-block-grid-1 large-block-grid-4">
<li>
<div class="icon">
<a href="producten/producten/" title="Kunsmest">
<img src="/i/overview/Fotolia_45201390_XS.jpg" alt="Kunstmest">
</a>
</div>
<div class="text">
<h2>
<nav>
<ul>
<li>
<a href="producten/producten/" title="Kunsmest">
Kunsmest
</a>
<ul>
<li>
<a href="#" title="lorem">
</a><ul><li class="first">test</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</nav>
</h2>
<p>
</p>
Meer over Kunsmest
</div>
</li>
<li>
<div class="icon">
<a href="producten/zaden" title="Zaden">
<img src="/i/overview/zadenwb.png" alt="Zaden">
</a>
</div>
<div class="text">
<h2>
<nav>
<ul>
<li>
<a href="producten/zaden" title="Zaden">
Zaden
</a>
<ul>
<li>
<a href="#" title="lorem">
</a>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</nav>
</h2>
<p>
</p>
Meer over Zaden
</div>
</li>
<li>
<div class="icon">
<a href="producten/handelsartikelen" title="Handelsartikelen">
<img src="/i/overview/artikelenwb.png" alt="Handelsart">
</a>
</div>
<div class="text">
<h2>
<nav>
<ul>
<li>
<a href="producten/handelsartikelen" title="Handelsartikelen">
Handelsartikelen
</a>
<ul>
<li>
<a href="#" title="lorem">
</a>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</nav>
</h2>
<p>
</p>
Meer over Handelsartikelen
</div>
</li>
<li>
<div class="icon">
<a href="producten/veevoer/" title="Veevoer">
<img src="/i/overview/veevoerwb.png" alt="Veevoer">
</a>
</div>
<div class="text">
<h2>
<nav>
<ul>
<li>
<a href="producten/veevoer/" title="Veevoer">
Veevoer
</a>
<ul>
<li>
<a href="#" title="lorem">
</a><ul><li class="first">pietjes eten</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</nav>
</h2>
<p>
</p>
Meer over Veevoer
</div>
</li>
<li>
<div class="text">
<h2>
<nav>
<ul>
<li>
<a href="diensten" title="Diensten">
Diensten
</a>
<ul>
<li>
<a href="#" title="lorem">
</a>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</nav>
</h2>
<p>
</p>
Meer over Diensten
</div>
</li>
</ul>
</div>
</div>

Answer 1

There are a variety of solutions, I've paired back your code a little to make the solution a little clearer, but have a look at this
http://codepen.io/dave_agilepixel/pen/cDtLk
I wouldn't repeat the item, or have the wrapper around the if you can avoid it, if you need the h2 for styling then use css or change the code to something like
<nav>
<ul>
<li><h2>Object</h2></li>
</ul>
</nav>
Also with the icons it might be easier to have those as CSS background images and use padding/background-position to set them in the design.
I hope that helps, in my example I've used position absolute and left to get the sub menu to work, but you could use display:none; or some other methods, if you use a combination of opacity and top then you can also add in css3 transitions to make it look jazzy.