Grandma Lives Far Away.com

Grandma Lives Far Away .com

This little blog is designed for all those grandmas and grandpas who indeed live far away from their grandbabies.

So much modern technology is available today that grandmas and grandpas should never feel distant from their grandbabies.

  Times were so different when I was raising my 5 children with my husband in a small farming community in southern Alberta than they are today.  My mom lived in Ontario 3000 miles away. It was too expensive to make a phone call and letter writing took at least a week to get across the country, so I was basically on my own.  When I did get to phone home once every few months my mom was so concerned with the cost and kept saying “we needed to hang up soon”.

Those days were very lonely for me and for my children. They never got to know their grandparents. So it was that I vowed to make a concerted effort to go the extra mile so that my grandbabies would always know who I was and who we the grandparents were.

With some creativity and modern computer technology I really feel like we have succeeded in achieving that goal.

We often return home to find  messages left on our telephone answering machine  from our 5 year old granddaughter in Vancouver, Washington just saying, “Grandma I love you”.  The latest was “Grandpa I just called to say “happy Father’s day”.

We were fortunate to have access to a computer with a Web Cam-they are so very inexpensive these days and very easy to run? Every home should have one and possibly you even have one that is built into your computer.

Make sure that your grandchildren also have access to a web cam so you can view each other on a daily basis.

There is a program called SKYPE that is free to join and gives you web cam access all over the world.

Here are some fun ideas that we have used to develop a stronger relationship with our grandchildren who live far away.

1. 1.      Sing songs together-we started singing simple songs like “The Wheels on the Bus” and we added familiar things like mommy says, Grandma says, Grandpa says etc. etc.
2. 2.    Find bright colored picture books from the library to read and show the pictures to the grandchildren and talk about the story when they are young and don’t have long attention spans.
3. 3.     Draw pictures and hold them up for the grandchildren to see and have them do the same for you
4. 4.     Grandpa was on a business trip to Trinidad not long ago and went to the local department store where he bought a special book to read to the grandchildren from his hotel room-so when you travel make them apart of your journey
5. 5.    Our granddaughter recently had her hair cut and the first thing she asked her mom was could she go home and show grandma and grandpa on the computer
6. 6.     We have played games like I Spy With My Little Eye- remember you can see what is in their house behind them and they can see the same in your house and behind you. Keep it simple.
7. 7.    Make up stories and let them add parts.  We started one one day about a princess named--- and she lived in ---- and ate--- etc. etc. They love this activity.
8. 8.     We each take pictures with our digital cameras and then send those back and forth so we can see what is happening as well as we have actually walked through our new house with our laptop with the web cam showing things.
9. 9.     We have hooked up the web cam and shown the snow out the window-they don’t have snow where they live
10. 1. Some days we just visit-we just sit and talk so we can see each other!