Long-Distance Grandparents

It's time for Marriage Monday, hosted by e-mom from Chrysalis.  She chose an interesting topic for the month of July: 

  " “Blessing Our Parents” taps into the joys of extended family. How are we incorporating the older generation into our married lives in healthy ways? And what are the issues we're struggling with?

And she gave us several titles to choose from!  I chose:

Long-Distance Grand-parenting: What Works for Us

 It is the one I can most closely relate to!  

Dave and I are blessed that our parents are still alive and fairly healthy.

Dave's parents live in a small town in Plymouth County, MA.  They are about 40 minutes from downtown Boston and about 25 min from "the beach house". They live in the same house where my husband grew up. 

My daughters call them "Grammy & Grampa".

Grammy and Grampa are about a 3 hour drive east from where we live.

They are members of their Unitarian church but are not born-again Christians.

Dave's mom was raised Baptist and his dad was raised Unitarian. Dave was raised in the Unitarian church.

My own parents live in a small town in the Mohawk Valley area of Central NY.

They are about 1 hour east of Syracuse and 1 hour west of us.  (we live in the Capital Region of NY). They live in a different town/different house than the one I grew up in, which is just across the Mohawk River by about 5 minutes, so they are still in my "hometown" area!

My daughters call them "Grandma & Grandpa".

My parents are born-again Free Methodist Christians.  They have been Christians my whole life. My mom was raised Pilgrim Holiness and my dad was raised Catholic.  I was raised in the Free Methodist church.

We are raising our 2 daughters in a non-denominational, Evangelical mega-church.  We started out, until our oldest was 12, in a small, inner-city charismatic-type church.  A tad bit different from our own upbringings!

Ok....the background is out of the way!

Our parents are doing the "grandparent" thing long-distance.

Sometimes it has been difficult.  Like when I had to arrange a sitter to stay with my oldest (she was 5) when I went into early labor (a week!) for my youngest, in the middle of the night.  My mom traveled in a snowstorm to get to our house to relieve the sitter.  

It was difficult when my father-in-law had to have major heart surgery when our oldest was just 3 and we couldn't travel everyday to Boston to be with him in the hospital.  We visited.  Not the same thing.

It has been difficult for the grandparents to not be here to see all the different academic/extracurricular milestones like the first violin recital, orchestra concerts, horse shows.

It's been hard not to have relatives nearby to babysit or help out when they were babies! (my closest sibling is an hour north of us and Dave's closest sibling is 2 hours east).  We have basically raised our children on our own, with the help of awesome teen sitters, neighbors, friends from church, daycare providers,  and friends who have "been there/done that".  When I was a stay-at-home-mom for 6 years, I had to hire babysitters to do things like go to the ob/gyn or dentist Or take my children along.  They learned early on how to entertain themselves and behave in public!  They kind of had to! :)

Here's how we have made it work....  How we have forged a good relationship with both sets of grandparents so they feel included and a part of our lives and our children's lives:

• Email:  we send out notes about report cards, invites to upcoming dance shows, general info of what the girls are doing, etc.
• Phone:  we try to call my parents about once a week via my cell to keep them updated and to "check " on them.  My dad does not "do" computers and my mom often doesn't do email any longer.  We call Dave's folks as needed....he often calls his dad when he has a "home repair" question!
• Cards/Gifts:  for their birthdays, we send cards, flowers, and gifts. None of them have birthdays in a time when it is convenient for us to travel, although my mom has an August birthday and we have been free in years past to go to their home for that.  It is very hard to travel during the school year to visit the grandparents. Most of our visiting takes place during the summer or.....
• Holidays:  The T----side of the family (my husband's side) expects us to spend Thanksgiving with them. For those of you who are new readers to this blog:  my husband is a direct descendant from a Pilgrim who traveled over on the Mayflower!  THANKSGIVING is with Grammy & Grampa. The only exception was when I was pregnant with Claire (now 11) and couldn't travel outside our area, due to doctor's orders.  Christmas is spent here at home with just the 4 of us although my parents stop in on Xmas Eve to do the gift exchange, etc.  Dave's folks come down earlier in the month to do the gift exchange. This is probably going to change as they get even older and traveling might become more burdensome.  
• Summer:  we do try to go out to the beach house a couple of times during July/August to spend time with Dave's folks  and the girls and I (if Dave can't get away from work) travel over to my folks' house for a day or 2 in the summer months as well.  When our oldest was younger, my parents used to travel here to spend a day around her birthday (which was yesterday!...they didn't come this year tho)
• Pictures:  we take lots of pictures and make photo books, etc.  We always make sure we give each set a school portrait, dance pics, prom, etc.  All the normal milestones of childhood.

We have also given out Grandparent Memory books to them as Xmas gifts and had them record their life events in those.  My dad has completed one and my daughters really enjoyed reading through it and learning more about their Grandpa M.  My mom is in the midst of completing one.  Dave's folks are getting them for Xmas this year and I am sure they will have them completed by the time we see them next summer!

"The silver-haired head is a crown of glory, if it is found in the way of righteousness."  Proverbs 16:31

My parents have prayed for us over the years and Dave's folks have been very generous with time, gifts, the use of the beach house, camping trips with us, etc.  They have also told the girls the family history and anecdotes about their lives.  My parents give Christian gifts often to my children and have also told them about life growing up in the 1930's/1940's, etc.

My daughters have been taught to pray for their grandparents and we often pray for the salvation of Dave's folks.  Lately, as they have become older, my youngest daughter has often expressed a burden for them.  We have witnessed, etc.  Planting seeds is something that is important to us as a family.

Both sets are there for us emotionally, even if they can't be here physically.

And to us, that is very important and has made a huge impact on us.

They also have left the parenting up to us.....they have the grand-parenting thing down pretty good....both sets tend to "spoil" them at times but yet respect our boundaries we have established.

For that, we are most thankful and we thank God for all 4 of them.

Dave's mom, Betty,  in sun on deck
Dave's dad, Warren, in shade on deck

My Dad, Dick M, on left
My Mom, Bea M, on right

"Children's children are the crown of old men, and the glory of children is their father."  Proverbs 17:6