Every year about this time the angst about where we go for Christmas and who we spend what time with begins. Everyone grows up with "traditions" and when you marry someone you're trying to weld two different traditions together into a solution that makes everyone happy. The problem with that is everyone can't be happy because traditions often overlap or conflict with each other. The end result -- someone isn't talking to someone else because "they" messed up the 50 years of tradition of doing "X" on the morning of "Y" -- and I walk around with a knot in my stomach because I know that someone is going to be unhappy -- removing the happiness from celebrating the birth of Christ and the gifts that He has bestowed on all of us. So the decision that I am faced with is when is enough -- enough? When do you say "its time for my own little family to have their own traditions, and we'll fit into other peoples schedules as we can?" And the follow-up question -- how do you communicate that decision to everyone else so that you don't become "the bad guy" -- the one that ruined Christmas for everyone else because I'm so selfish and want things my way?

My oldest daughter -- through her friends at school -- has discovered MySpace. Her mom told her that she would be monitoring what was going on her site and checked it out the other night. She found that my daughter had accepted invitations from two guys who said they were teenagers (my daughter is 13) and they convinced my daughter to give them her phone number. Now she's getting phone calls from these guys during all hours. I received a "dad come and get me" phone call on Sunday night (after driving 5 hours in the snow back from Sunriver). When I asked why she said that she didn't want to be at her moms house right now. The issue is that her mom told her about all the dangers of mySpace and she just didn't want to hear it from her mom. I did pick her up and took her out to dinner to talk and we discussed the risks. My daughter was more mad at herself than mad at her mom. One thing to know about my oldest daughter is that she's an A student at Cornerstone Christian Church and is a model student and child. In her entire life I think I've only had to discipline her maybe once -- she's just a the nicest and most kind person on the planet.

So my question to my dad peers -- should I: