By MICHELLE A. MONROE / THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

MISSION VIEJO – Miss Meme’s Kreative Kids closed it doors on June 30 after 16 years of children’s day care.

Sharon Kammerer bought the building in 1996 from a real estate office. Her husband, daughter and grandson helped remodel and paint the building to make the office into a children’s play area.

Krammerer sold the building last August to La Paz LLC.

Her daughter, Cheri Whetstone, has been running the day care for more than 10 years and was allowed by the new owners to keep renting the space but recently decided to shut down.

“I just turned 50, I just got engaged, my son is independent now and I decided to move on,” Whetstone said.

Whetstone and her two employees ate lunch and reminisced about their years at Miss MeMe’s at their last day on Thursday. A Disney soundtrack played in the background as the children took their last afternoon nap there.

“It’s going to be funny to drive by here I think, because I live here in the community, and I shop right over here and it’s going to be funny to look at this place,” said Karen DaSilva, who’s worked at Miss MeMe’s for almost nine years. “It’s my life.”

They laughed when thinking back on the first time they walked in, and tears welled up at the memories and stories told over the years.

The building will be demolished in the coming months and construction on a new Chase bank begins in January.

“I’m not sad it’s going to be demolished,” said Kristina Deter, who has worked there for eight years and whose two children attend Miss MeMe’s. “The building to me isn’t what made the school; it was the kids, the people, the teachers, and the love that was in here.”

The brightly colored walls are half empty because the pictures of all the children who attended the school are packed away.

Whetstone donated many of the school’s items to a Vietnam Veterans group in Mission Viejo. While she says her time as a preschool teacher is over, she’ll stay involved with helping children.

“I was thinking about going to Mission Hospital and reading to children there,” she said. “I have a lot of tapes and songs and I love to sing and just tell stories and things like that so that’s what I want to do.”