conditional statement question

I have been learning action script for a couple of months now, and I have a newbie question. My page loads with the background fading in through a function I created. Next I wanted to either place or animate my contents coming in after that. How do I create a conditional statement to test whether the background has completed coming in and then execute the rest of the contents. I am probably looking at this the wrong way. Any help would be great. Thanks in advance.