Mom and Hopkids at Share & Care on Halloween day, October 2010

Our family spent a total of 8 years at Share and Care Learning Center in North Aurora.  The kids started there in Fall 2010 when Topher was a baby, Lila was 2 and Delaney was 4.   So many wonderful memories of the friends we made both through families of classmates and the kids' teachers.   Lila's nickname was "Tater Tot" because she loved tater tots for lunch, and Topher's nickname was "Squeaks" because he had just learned to walk, and had walked around all day throughout that old big brick building in his squeaky little shoes!!  I could go on and on about how much SNC has meant to our family and what a wonderful place it was for the kids, but for now I wanted to share this precious photo.  I think it's the only one I have of all 4 of us, taken at the old building that was torn down in 2015.   This was our first fall there.  A teacher snapped a quick candid of us during pickup on Halloween day, and later printed it out and gave it to me.  I don't think at the time she realized just how precious of a keepsake this would be for me all these years.   I keep it in a plastic protector on the back door that leads to our garage!   Suzanne Starbel (the owner who started the daycare as a preschool for her own kids in 1985, renting one little room out of the old building) is retiring after 40 years of growing, leading and putting her whole heart and soul into the school.  She is selling the daycare this summer, so her family asked all previous families and teachers to share a small memory in an online memory book.  This is the photo that I shared.   I am happy for her that she is retiring, sad that the daycare will see new ownership and change the way things are run, as it inevitably will.  Change always happens, it is just a part of life.  It was bittersweet seeing the kids grow up and move on from their "Share and Care" era, for sure.   We will miss those days so much and look back on them fondly.  I already do.

Below is the tribute I added tonight to the online memory book her family created for her. What a sweet walk down memory lane.  The page is a little blurry.  Not sure how to fix that, but hopefully it is read-able.   My words are from the heart.