I may not be understanding the general concept of how to control the quadcopter that I am trying to build with the APM2

My understanding is that I connect the following to my APM2.5

Accelerometer

PDB for powering the motors and output rail by battery

ESC's and Motors

XBee - I have a couple of different Xbee's that I purchased including a 900 pro and an XSC.

What I have done so far in following the tutorials. I plugged in the the APM to USB and my computer. I followed the instructions on the wiki to install the APM Planner Software (Is this also referred to GCS?). I configured the board to be a quadcopter and installed the correct program to the APM.

I configured the XBee's to 57,600 using X-CTU. Now I unplug the USB from the APM and the PC and power the APM from the PDB. Everything looks great, seems like it is working fine. Lights flashing, etc..

Now am I supposed to connect the xbee on the ground side to the PC APM Planner Software by selecting the right COM port and baud rate? This will connect to the APM automatically? The Xbee establishes a link between the APM2.5 and the planner software?

So basically I will control my quadcopter via my PC through APM Planner Software using XBee? Do I need a joystick, can I use Keyboard commands to fly it? I am fairly to new to all of this, any help would be greatly appreciated. I need a book called "APM for dummies..."