January 1, 2009

Wishing our readers a healthy, prosperous new year

Photo by Paul W

Up until about a century ago, when people left their country to settle in a new land, they would likely never see their families, parents, or grandparents again. The difficulty of distances were too great. Letters would often take months to arrive. Traveling home would have taken days or months, and was usually to too costly.

Today, with the blessings of modern technology, grandparents can keep in touch with their grandchildren easily.

Telephones, internet, mobile phones, smart phones, instant messaging, video phones, smart phones, video chats, VoIP, email, text-messaging, personal and family blogs and websites, photo sharing sites, other resourceful websites. We can fly across the country in the space of a few hours, and usually for less than the cost of driving.

We have technology, finally, that for the first time in human history allows people to really maintain rich connections with much larger numbers of people. ~Pierre Omidyar

Happy new year 2009

So, at the beginning of this new year, we wish to express gratitude for the blessing grandparents have of staying connected with family though technology. May you love and enjoy your grandchildren.

We want to wish our readers a healthy, prosperous new year. We are grateful for the opportunity we have of associating with you.

- Shayne and Tanda Packer

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Filed under Holidays by Grandpa Shayne

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December 23, 2008

“The Christmas Box” book giveaway

The Christmas Box book As a way of saying thank you to our readers, we are having a Christmas giveaway. We will award 35 copies of the New York Times bestselling book, The Christmas Box, by Richard Paul Evans. He originally wrote The Christmas Box as an expression of love for his two daughters, never intending for it to be published. Now, many Christmas seasons later, this touching tale relates the meaning of Christmas in a profound but simple way.

This book was the inspiration for the many angel statues around the country which are places to remember a child who has died. Mr. Evans founded The Christmas Box House International, an organization devoted to building shelters and providing services for abused and neglected children. To date, more than 16,000 children have been housed in Christmas Box House facilities.

The most important story we will ever write in life is our own — not with ink, but with our daily choices. ~Richard Paul Evans

The Christmas Box – Richard Paul Evans shares his story.

“So,” you ask, “What do I need to do to get one of these free books?”

Just two easy things: First, we want you to subscribe to GrandparentsTLC.com, either by email or RSS. Subscribing is free, and lets you know as soon as new posts are published.

Second, we want you to share with us a favorite holiday activity or tradition you have with with your grandchildren. Holidays such as Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, or a special New Years Eve party. To qualify, your story needs to be a minimum of 100 words (about 9 lines in the comment field). Write your entry in the comment section of this post.

We only have 35 of these books to give away, so don’t miss out! Do it now while it’s on your mind. Click here -

So spread the word, and let the comments commence. Thank you. We look forward to reading your entries.

By the way, If you already own a copy of The Christmas Box, you can gift this to a grandchild or a friend.

- Shayne and Tanda Packer

We will mail a copy of this book to you at no charge. So be sure to enter your correct email address in the email field. We will contact you for your shipping address. This free book offer is good only while the supply lasts. Entries will be accepted until midnight January 5th, 2009.

[Update: Please feel free to add your story, even though this giveaway has ended. No more books will be given out. Each of the people who commented before the deadline will receive their book.]

Filed under Activities, Announcements, Holidays by Grandpa Shayne

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December 13, 2008

Favorite Christmas webpages for grandparents

Christmastime is a delightful season! Especially when you share it with your loved ones. Grandchildren love to receive thoughtful gifts from grandparents. But more importantly, grandkids love to feel that special kind of TLC that only Grandma or Grandpa can give. Whether it’s through a personal visit, a package of homemade goodies, or via some form of modern technology — connecting grand-to-grand is a special gift grandkids look forward to with an anticipation to outshine the jolly ol’ elf in the red suit himself. There’s lots of fantastic resources on the web where Grandparents can get ideas for projects, crafts, stories, gifts, etc. Grammy Tanda and I share with you here, our favorite Christmas webpages for grandparents. Some of these links are from our very own subscribers — other grandparents who have websites or blogs — with helpful ideas and tips for that loving connection with your grandchildren.

Uncles and aunts and cousins, are all very well, and fathers and mothers are not to be despised; but a grandmother at holiday time is worth them all. ~Fanny Fern

We know it can be frustrating at times to find what you’re looking for on the internet, so we hope these links will make it easier for you. Enjoy browsing our favorite Christmas web pages.

- Grandpa Shayne

(Tip: right-click or command-click the links to open them in a new tab so that you can refer back to this article.)

Let us know if you have a favorite Christmas webpage. Your comments are appreciated.

Why not give us a gift by bookmarking or emailing this to a friend!

Filed under Activities, Holidays by Grandpa Shayne

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November 25, 2008

Favorite Thanksgiving webpages for grandparents

A fun part of the holidays are family traditions. I want to share some tips for celebrating Thanksgiving to give you ideas for establishing your family traditions. Then Shayne and I will share our favorite Thanksgiving webpages with free resources for grandparents. Because as you know, the web is a world of discovery.

The first thing I think of about Thanksgiving is families getting together, sharing food, fun, and laughter. Food often reminds us of our favorite memories of Thanksgivings past. Relationships are being built while taking time to share favorite memories. Small activities give us opportunities to connect with our grandchildren in comfortable ways — while we’re setting tables, eating, cleaning up.

Take time to share memories with your grandkids of Thanksgiving when their parents were little, or when your were little. How it’s the same, how it’s different. Tell them what your parents and grandparents were like so they feel a connection with their heritage. Reminisce what their parents were like as children, and things you remember about your grandchildren as babies. Share family stories. Everybody has favorite family stories that get past around, embarrassing moments, silly times. Often, repeating those stories over meal times becomes a family tradition and builds fond memories.

Many families have traditional activities they share together — a family football game, a walk in the crisp fall air. One of the things my family did when I was a child was watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving parade.

One Thanksgiving tradition I started when our family was young is to set 3 kernels of corn by the side of each place. Each of person takes a turn telling 3 blessings they are grateful for. This idea represents the friendship the Native Americans extended to the Pilgrims in teaching them how to survive in this new land of America. They taught the English colonists how to grow corn and thus helped them survive their first year in Plimoth Plantation in New England. This led to the first Thanksgiving feast.

So, enjoy your family and your traditions. If you can’t all be together, use the blessing of modern technology to connect with your family this Thanksgiving. It’s all about making memories!

A happy family is but an earlier heaven. ~John Bowring

Grandpa Shayne and I have so much to be thankful for. We will be enjoying Thanksgiving with 3 of our married children and 5 of our grandchildren. Even though it will take us all day to get there, it will be well worth the trip. ♩♬♪ Over the river and through the woods to our grandchildren’s house we go. ♪♫♩

We express our gratitude for you, our dear readers and friends. We wish you a delightful Thanksgiving holiday with your family and loved ones.

- Grammy Tanda

Now, enjoy these links to our favorite Thanksgiving web pages. (Hint: right-click or command-click the links to open them in a new tab so that you can refer back to this article.)

We welcome your comments. Tell us about the Thanksgiving traditions your family share.

Please help us reach more readers by bookmarking or emailing this to a friend!

Filed under Activities, Holidays by Grammy Tanda

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November 22, 2008

Keeping in touch with grandchildren

[Editorial note: We are pleased to feature Grandpa Davison as a guest writer. He and his wife have 5 grandchildren, are retired, and live in the U.K. By using the Internet, they are keeping in touch with their grandchildren and family.]

Using the Internet to stay close to family and friends at home and abroad

How do you raise your children and grandchildren to enjoy the full benefits of the extended family, if grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and friends are scattered around the world. This is a problem I have lived with first hand!

When I was a young teenager in the 1950s

My family emigrated from the UK to the USA, settling down in Florida. We left almost my entire family back in the UK, My uncle’s family had crossed over before us and had settled in Winnipeg. My parents stayed in touch with the rest of the family through the occasional “Blue Flyer” — a flimsy, hard to read, light weight aerogramme. While it was relatively expensive, it was far quicker than surface mail which could take up to six or eight weeks. Phone calls were very rare and only used for family emergencies. No wonder we had no real ties with the larger family remaining at home. Sadly some would pass away before we returned to see them.

Adding to the problems

Returning to the UK in the 1970s, I further complicated my communications difficulties by bringing my American wife and children to live in England. Now I was closer to my English relatives, but my brother and his family still remained in Florida and all my wife’s family lived in the US Midwest.

So many more letters and a few more phone calls were needed. Transatlantic phone calls still cost a few pounds to make so they were only used for special occasions. Over the next few years we made friends with many locally based US Air Force families, all of whom returned to the US to live and retire, further increasing our web of international friends and family.

Technology to the rescue

Just when we were beginning to feel the burden of high postage costs, especially around Christmas, transatlantic phone calls became more competitive dropping to ten pence (16 cents) per minute. Our letter writing just about stopped, but the greeting cards continued to flow and we still limited our phone calls to a small number of family and friends and tried to keep them to a short duration. This was still not the way to stay in touch although it seemed the solution. In the mid 1990s, we started using email but found that few of our friends in the USA were hooked up to the Internet and even fewer in the UK. Most of those emails went to family or friends via their work email addresses until the wider spread acceptance of the Internet in the early 2000s.

Now it works!

Just about everyone we know now has personal email so it is very easy to stay in touch worldwide. We have even used ship board web connections via satellite to read and send messages via our own web email service — quite costly however! As most of our contacts have moved to broadband (ADSL), exchanging photos is now quick and easy. One downside however, is the proliferation of email jokes with huge attachments (and absolutely no personal news). This hardly constitutes keeping in touch in my books but at least we know the senders are still alive!

Free International phone calls

We now use Skype, one of several Voice-over-Internet-Protocol (VoIP) services, with excellent results. (I have also used MS Messenger but I find Skype the best for me.) This enables us to talk to any other Skype user (almost) anywhere in the world through our PC mic/speakers, free of charge.

Skype also offers a “Skype Out” service that allows you to make cheap international calls with Skypeto telephones and mobile phones. We use it on a pay-as-you-go top-up basis. This service allows me to talk to most overseas land-line phones for about 1.5 pence per minute (about 2.1 cents) — about 25% of current international phone rates. Even better, with an inexpensive webcam, we can now “video conference” our family, provided they too have a webcam connected via Skype. While voice multi connections are possible via Skype, I do not believe it is yet possible to have a virtual video family reunion on the Skype service, although I am sure they are working on it! Skype now offers “Skype” phones which can provide an enhanced home phone that combines all the functions of land line phones, mobile/cellular phones and web phones for a fraction of traditional day to day phone costs. My friend and technical advisor is currently “checking” this out so watch his blog on www.richardfarrar.com.

Sharing Family Photos

We have tried using Flickr to share our photos around our family via the web but the uploading times are slow and not that easy. We have also found that many of our friends and family found the viewing service hard to use so we have opted to use our own web site. Currently I load the photos quickly and easily via FTP and my audience can access them at their leisure. The hard part for me, is cataloguing and labeling each photo, a process involving ASP code writing and therefore not too user friendly. I will move my photo library to our blog site soon, automating the process and making maintenance and access much easier.

Family Blog Sites

On the subject of blog sites, that seems to be the way ahead with the “family communication network”. What has started out as a hobby hopefully will get more of my friends and family commenting and contributing content (see www.thegrandparentsblog.com).

Publishing Deadlines

Creating content can be fun but is time consuming, however it is a great way to keep in touch. We use WordPress software and that makes blog site management easy. It also brings plug-in benefits — extra little tools to manage the site and to improve the communication process and content value.

Twittering

One such plug-in displays a link to twitter — an internet communication tool that takes short messages and posts them automatically to your subscribers. I use twitter, but have only a small following — my fault, because I am not yet used to adding news items and so far not many in my family/friends network have signed up.

In Summary

Thus far, we have been able to find old friends we thought we had lost touch with forever. We can stay in daily contact with brothers and sisters and other family members, between our sadly, far too infrequent visits to each other. It is getting better every day as web technology improves and our grandchildren now have a much greater appreciation for our global family.

Sadly too late for me, I saw my grandparents only twice in their last twenty years because of the transatlantic divide! I am so grateful that our own grandchildren will not have the same regrets.