Instead of celebrating the Thanksgiving holiday in their Minneapolis home this week, Shaun Nugent and Chris Denton are marking their eighth month in Guatemala on what has become an unexpectedly difficult quest to adopt the 4-year-old orphan who has become the center of their lives.

Nugent and Denton, who married in August 2005, first traveled to Guatemala this spring with Nugent's two sons, Bryan and Colin, to meet the little girl they want to adopt.

"We were dreadfully nervous," Denton said, remembering the first time they saw the girl with her foster family in the lobby of the Westin Hotel in Guatemala City. But Denton's fears that the child would be frightened were unfounded.

"I don't know why, but she was very comfortable with us immediately. It was a lot easier than I thought it would be," Denton said.

Nothing else about their adoption process has been easy.

Denton said she feels that she is "in limbo" along with more than 3,000 other U.S. families trying to adopt Guatemalan children.

The families don't know what will happen with their cases because Guatemalan rules regarding adoption are set to change Jan. 1. Guatemala intends to stop processing adoptions to the United States and other countries where an international treaty dealing with adoptions is not in force.

The Minneapolis couple expect to meet with Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., on Saturday, when he will be in Guatemala to urge the country's Congress to allow U.S. adoptions already underway to be completed under existing law.

"It would be unconscionable to pull the rug out from under the families that already have the emotional attachments to their kids," said Coleman, co-chairman of the Congressional Coalition on Adoption.

The problems that Nugent and Denton have encountered forced them to put their lives on hold and move to Guatemala. In April, Nugent resigned as CEO of Sun Country Airlines. After initially taking a leave of absence, Denton also resigned from her job as a business process consultant at Target.

They have barely lived in their new home in the Linden Hills neighborhood in Minneapolis over the past eight months. Since April 1, the first day they laid eyes on the little girl, Nugent, Denton or both of them have spent part of every day with her. At the outset, they served as her foster parents. In recent months, they've visited her in an orphanage.

Thousands of homeless kids

"There are thousands and thousands of kids that don't have homes," Denton said, adding that the needs of those children should take precedence over politics.

Kjersti Olson, Latin America program manager for the Children's Home Society and Family Services in St. Paul, said her agency helped 65 families adopt children from Guatemala in 2006. Now, she said, "We are not actively taking any new applicants."

Guatemala is preparing to overhaul its adoption system to meet child-protection standards defined in the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption. The U.S. State Department advised Americans in September to avoid beginning adoptions until there is clarity about Guatemala's new system.

"The reason you have a Hague treaty is because there are countries that do have concerns about child trafficking," Coleman said. But he argues that the procedures that Guatemala will create to meet the Hague criteria should not be used as a reason to greatly delay adoptions that have been in the works for months. The United States intends to comply with Hague standards in 2008.

Coleman said the issue is clear: "You give a child who needs love to a family that wants to give them love and the opportunity to bring them up in the state of Minnesota."

Dad is familiar with adoption