Shared vacations. You don't always have to go visit the family or vice versa, sometimes it's nice to meet everyone somewhere cool. It doubles as great family memories and sitters when mom and dad need to get away.

Oh this is hard. We have a 1 y.o. and live 6-12 hours from the 3 sets of grandparents. My husband does quick Facetime chats with his mom and dad/stepmom frequently, but I have to resort to Skype with my folks. Calling, setting up a skyper time/connection...it just feels like a big deal...and a drag....and basically happens once in a blue moon. I'm so behind in printing photos for our son's album, much less putting them online for family to see. I want my folks and my son to have a strong relationship, but it's more work than I was hoping it would be.

All are great ideas & Skype/Facetime are the best! When I was pregnant with my first baby while living in Australia, my family back in Tennessee through me a Skype baby shower, which involved them all gathering at my parents' house with the snacks & presents, etc. & my husband & I made similar snacks on our side of the world. Everyone opened the present he or she brought so I could see them & thank them "face to face" - lots of laughter & tears but it was so wonderful. Then my parents brought all the gifts when they came for the birth. You could do similar things for birthdays, etc. where they can be there for parties & see opening presents that were sent or whatever. But it's really the quick conversations here & there & snippets of everyday life that make being far away easier so if you guys can Facetime, it's so sweet.

Instagram is a great way to share photos. You can always create a prive network of friends to share with. I like it because I don't feel that I am bugging everyone with emails of photos. I think shared vacations is great too. My husband's family does it, and we all rent a house in the Caribbean or a ski lodge. It's a great way to spend a week together.

When my niece was two, I moved across country. This was before skype. I would buy books for her and then record myself reading them. I sent the book and tape to her. She would put the tapes in her little tape player and listen to them over and over while turning the pages of the book. I did this for the nephews that came along later and they all seemed more comfortable with me when we got together.

When my kids were too young to speak on the phone, i used to take a book, call my parents, and told my son or daughter to "read" the book for them. With the pictures as a support, my kids could bable a longtime and my parents heard the little voice. With my friends, we dont wait anymore the perfect time for a long call - because we nerver find it. We just call, say how're you, speak a little about everyday things and hang, as with the friends you see often.

Long before Skype or even email, when even making a long-distance phone call was prohibitively expensive, my dad was stationed overseas for months at a time with three little kids at home who couldn't even remember him sometimes. He taped himself reading bedtime stories, he wrote actual letters, and he sent little gifts back for us. It was still hard for all of us, but we managed. The tangible things are also far more memorable for small children than a phone call - though I'm sure I talked to my dad occasionally, I have no memory of it, while the letters and treasures he sent are still loaded with memories and among my most cherished possessions.

I live in Toronto and my whole family lives in Ireland. Now, with the birth of my daughter, Facetime is key; my Mom and I Facetime every day even if it's only for 5 mins. I also take short videos (of her first reactionary smile, her playing and cooing in her crib etc.), put them in my google drive and share them with the family.

It's still very hard because my parents can't hold her and they can't participate in her daily life, but she knows their voices, even at 6 weeks and soon enough she'll be able to chat back to them.

Oh...there is no substitute for real. We burn a hole in our United mileage card racking miles to visit every year, stay for at least a month, post photos and videos on Flickr religiously, call every Sunday morning, and mail drawings and gifts.

But a dear one fell and is in the hospital this month, and we have to face just how Not There we genuinely are. They didn't bring us food when our babies were born, we're not dropping off magazines right now.

You who consider moving far, far away, know that you will spend a ton of money and hours on making a connection that will never be as deep as being there. It cannot be done. I still would stick with our choices, but the genuine impact of the distance is visible in the twelve hours of plane flight, in my kids hiding behind my skirts around relatives we endured the airplane for... Imperfect indeed!

We have been living in Sydney for five years and this is what is working for us.

A scheduled weekly Skype session with Grandma where the kids talk about their week. Two blogs, one family only with video and lots of photos. Lots of tidbits on FB. An annual photo calendar with the highlights of the year. Holiday and "just because" cards and packages. Using online stores to send gifts for birthdays and special occasions. Since my husband is Dutch and I am American, we alternate visiting "home" so that we are only doing one massive trip a year.

Even with all of that, we are working on a move closer to home because 24+ hours of travel time to family, plus missing out on friends' lives is more than we want to sacrifice, even for a fantastic lifestyle.

We love using Google Hangouts rather than Skype these days because we can include multiple family members in one call.

I love the ideas of Instragram and recording each other reading books to stay in touch. I would also recommend a private family YouTube channel.

My husband's family lives in the Middle East and the internet is just not reliable enough to even think about video chats, shipping anything is nearly impossible, and the phone connection isn't good enough for more than 30 minutes a week. Instead, we set up a YouTube channel where grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins can all take quick videos on their phones for everything from grandma's famous dinners to cousins' piano recitals. We find that these quick clips of everyday help us and our kids stay concretely involved in each others lives.

These videos have also as a mini video diary for the entire family. Its become a tradition for each family member to pick their favorite video/moment of the year and replay it when we all get together for New Years. Its not as good as seeing our family members live over chat, but we will surely cherish these videos for generations.

I'm an American living in Ireland with my Irish husband. He has one sister who married a Croatian man another one who lives in New Zealand with her Kiwi husband. With so much family all over the world (my mother-in-law jokes that she bred her kids for export) we rely on technology so much. I've particularly loved Whatsapp, a great app for Android and Iphone. It allows you to send texts, pictures, and even video messages to anyone else who has the app. All it uses is an internet connection. With so many weird time differences to keep track of it's a great way to drop a quick note, get a quick pic or message without worrying about waking up family or friends.

For calling the U.S. we use MagicJack, an app on my husband's Iphone. It lets me make calls to the U.S. without racking up long distance calls. It even assigns you a U.S. number so family and friends don't have to incur huge charges to call us back. Again, it's based on internet connection (won't work with 3G unlike Whatsapp) and so this can be fickle with our terrible country internet service. They are beta testing an app for Android but on my first using it wasn't very good so give it a little time to improve.

We made a 'name quilt for each of our kids. We had family and friends each make a square, nothing fancy just fabric of their choice (some bought fabric, some cut up shirts, ties, etc.) and their names stitched on. Then as our kids grew we would talk at night about the people who love them on their quilt and when the'd see that aunt or uncle or random friend a year later we could remind them 'remember the square with the pocket? That was from this Uncle Jordan.' And they would have their own familiarity with that person. We send letters, have photos and a family blog.

PS I ended up being much closer to my grandparents who lived far away rather than the ones who lived in the same state simply because of the effort made by my out of state grandparents - phone calls before and after special events, letters, care packages, etc. It can be done, but requires effort and a realization that you won't have the day to day relationship, but you can still have a very deep and meaningful one.

This only works one way but I have started a blog to keep extended family in the loop of what our family life is like and how the kids are developing. I keep the profile low and don't give locations or in-depth details so unless you know us you won't be interested in such mundane writings. (You could always set the blog to private and have extended family and friends sign up so you can vet your readers.) I think it's easier for extended family to feel they know us and develop a bond because they know of the little seemingly unimportant details about how we function and the major things that are shaping the little minds growing up in a foreign environment that they haven't experienced. We also have the photos of the extended family members out and look through albums periodically so when we do Skype on big holidays the faces are familiar if nothing else. Care packages are wonderful, aren't they? As is WhatsApp.

With my in-laws in Indonesia we only get together maybe once a year or once every two years, so once-a-week Skype calls are essential! Also, I keep a family journal of sorts on blogger for family and friends which has proven equally as important. The grandparents really got a hit out of the "First-year" blog for each of the kids; with minimal time and effort invested on our part.

Skype for sure!