If statements checking variables ...not working please help

I’m having the hardest time getting this to work, I have the concept of how things need to be put together, but the code is wrong. I can’t even get the first if statement to work.

I have a menu that is going to be loading external swfs into an empty mc. It needs to check to make sure the external swf has gone through its stopping animation before loading something else. Here’s what I’ve got so far… I hope this is clear enough…

button:

on (press) {
	//check if this is the first mc being loaded
	if (var_content_empty == true) {
		_root.mc_content.loadMovie ("girl.swf");
		//or something else is already loaded so stop it
	} else if (var_content_empty == false) {
		_root.mc_content.gotoAndPlay ("stop");
		//check for when it's done stopping
		//then load the new content
		if (var_content_stopped == true) {
			_root.mc_content.loadMovie ("girl.swf");
		} else if (var_content_stopped == false) {
			//not sure what this code is, should keep checking to see if it stopped yet
			???
		}
	}
}

frame where button resides:

var_content_empty = true;
stop ();

first frame of external swf

var_content_empty = false;
var_content_stopped = false;

last frame of external swf

var_content_stopped = true;

I would really really appreciate some help on this, it’s the last thing to fix and then my website is finished!