When my wife and I got married, we traded our long-distance relationship (My wife's originally from Toronto and I'm the one who's from Vancouver.) with long-distance families. After getting married, the distance between my wife and I got smaller, but our life doesn't just begin and end with us.
Making sure our son gets to know his grandparents and aunt and uncles from Toronto is very important. We've been fortunate in the last year and a half that my wife's family have been able to travel to Vancouver quite often and also us to Toronto. This past Christmas was special since we were able to spend it with both sides of our family and extended family here in Vancouver. Each opportunity our son gets to spend time with his Toronto family is very special as each visit is really an 'event' (as visits were to my wife and I while we were dating - 17 cities over 3 years).
Even on my side of the family, my dad's sister and my grandmother are living in the Philippines. My mom's whole family (5 brothers and sisters and their children), my grandparents are all living in LA. She's the only one here. My mom-in-law's brothers and their families are all in the US as well. She's the only one here in Canada. Visits sometimes can be few and far between.
Any form of communication or contact becomes essential when in any form of long-distance relationships. Email, cellphones, Facebook all become portals of communication to share stories and memories of each other. Lately, my wife's parents discovered Skype and are having Skype dates with our son. It's great since he gets to see them and interact with them even if it is only in video form. It's great that he understands that it's his grandparents on the screen. Even for a short time, they can share a moment with our son seeing the sparkle in his eye.
Skype saves the day for long-distance families. Hoping they would invent that Star Trek teleport in reality already.


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