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:

Usually when someone asks this, they really mean "Is it ok to fight in front of your kids?"... but they don't want to admit that they actually fight, so they use the PC term "argue".

So now that you know what I'm really asking , let me paint the picture a bit. It's Thanksgiving morning, and my family is coming over in a few hours. The house needs to be cleaned, the kids need to be fed breakfast, my wife is scurrying around the kitchen cooking up a storm (she's an amazing gourmet chef), and somehow we started talking about finances.

I don't even remember how it came up, but the issue was my attitude towards money I make on my side business and whether or not I consider it truly our money after I earn it and before I take some of the profit and invest it back into the business. Sounds like a fun topic eh?

This morning my oldest daughter Bridgett played her indoor soccer game, which they won in the last 2 minutes with an adrenalin-pumping comeback. While she was celebrating with her team, I asked my middle child Delany if she'd like to come with me to the bike shop (I needed to to exchange some AmFIB shoe covers for the right size).

She agreed, but as we were climbing into my truck she nonchalantly asked me if I was ever going to start taking her and her siblings out on dates "ever again". Doh! There are times as a dad when my kids' innocent, honest questions completely knock the wind out of me .

I live in the Pacific Northwest, where it rains almost year-round with a few weeks of sun in the summer. In fact, it's raining right now - not exactly great camping weather.

I've discovered however that my two-man tent fits nicely in our family room, and it made the perfect set up for my son and I to pretend we were out camping. We had a great time wrestling in the tent, and brought his entire HotWheels car collection in the tent to play with. Even the dog had fun

I am not a pet person. I never have been, and I never will be. My wife, on the other hand, loves pets, cats in particular. She works for a vet clinic, so she gets to be around them all the time. She had three cats when we got married. Never having lived with cats before, I was not aware of the havoc they would wreak in my life once we got married and I had to share an apartment with them. For instance, one of them was a cranky old witch who shed white hair all over the place and howled at you and scratched you (or at least tried - she had no claws any more) when you just walked by her.

It rains almost continually here in Oregon this time of year, but today was crystal clear. I finished raking the leaves, mowed the lawn, and fed the kids lunch while my wife was out doing some grocery shopping.

I was thinking an after-lunch snooze would be so nice, and just like clockwork my wife called me from the road with a suggestion: "Honey, why don't you put up the lights since the weather is so nice?". AARRGGHHH!!

One thing that my wife and I have always been very careful to do is to separate the person from the job. What I mean by that is when one of my kids do something well, whether it is one of their assigned jobs or coloring a picture, we tell them "good job" instead of "good boy" or "good girl". This way, their worth is not tied to the job they do. Saying "good boy" may be fine when they do a good job, but what about the time where they do a bad job (and we all do that)? Does that mean they are a bad boy or bad girl? Not at all.

When my wife and I were married 13 years ago, we tossed around the idea of having two of our own and then adopting two, but since then we've had three of our own and topped it off with a black Mini Schnauzer. We won't be having any more of our own thanks to Dr Skeeter, and the costs of adopting a fourth child seem way out of the ball bark right now.

I mean, wouldn't it be about $20K by the time it's a done deal?

Any dads out there who have been through this? What are the pros and cons of adopting local vs abroad? What should I expect for cost, time frame, and process?

Has it been a good experience for you, and would you do it again if you were able to do so financially?

Each of us has been given our own skills and talents not just as dads, but as employees too.

I consider myself fortunate to be able to work full time and also teach Java Web Programming and General Computer Science at Portland Community College. I started teaching about 4 years ago for some extra cash, with the expectation that I'd only do it for a term or two (at least that was what my wife and I discussed at the time).

I have two children - a girl, age 7 and a boy, age 4 - and one of the things I try to do is reinforce good things about them so they have a good self image. For instance, one of the things I will do is out of the blue say "You're cute" to them when I pass them in the hall, or we are just sitting in the kitchen or living room together, or any other randon situation when I'm with them. I know they like it by the smile on their face when I say it. I know it's getting through and I'm setting a good example when, on their own, they say the same thing to me, or even better, they say it to each other (during those times when they aren't fighting with each other).