Alas, I tried to help. To the theme developers:
You have made by FAR the best default them ever :) Great work! Thank you x10000!
If you get a moment and feel like taking a peep at this whole footer/widget thing, perhaps we'll uncover something. I just wanted to do my part and report my findings.
JS function arranges footer widgets vertically. Calling this is actually causing my footer in child theme to not float properly.
I'll see if I can find more information that perhaps can help us further. Details to follow later today.