Some houses get sold. Others get passed down. For Mike and Margo Ragano, their Thornwood home came with a family story already in progress.

In 2015, the couple was house hunting in Arlington Heights when Margo's dad called with news: her uncle was selling his place in Thornwood. One visit was all it took. Jim and Denise McNamee had raised four kids in that house. Today, the Raganos are raising three of their own there, and Jim and Denise only moved about two miles away.

Mike and Margo both grew up in Schaumburg, attending Conant and Schaumburg high schools, but never crossed paths. It took a wedding in June 2014, with Mike as a groomsman and Margo as a bridesmaid, to change that. They were engaged five months later and married the following July.

Mike, a University of Illinois finance grad, is a partner at Novo Advisors, a Chicago consulting firm. Margo earned her Emergency Management degree from Western Illinois University and ran her own residential cleaning business before staying home to raise their boys.

The Ragano boys keep Mike and Margo busy. Michael, 9, loves golf and swimming and just picked up the violin. Finn, 7, is happiest on the move with friends. Luke, 5, is in his third year of preschool at Haines and loves hockey and swimming. As Margo puts it, he's "our homie with an extra chromie."

"My kids run off the bus and instantly have so many kids to run around with," Margo says. "They hop from one house or yard to the next."

The Raganos love to host, and Mike cooks a huge spread for every holiday. Each December, about 20 family members head to The Osthoff Resort in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin, for Santa, a Christmas market, and a horse-drawn carriage ride to dinner.

Their love for Thornwood has proven contagious. Mike's best friend moved in. Then his parents. Then, this past July, his sister and her husband.

This is the same street that once surprised its garbage man, Mike, with banners, balloons, and donuts on National Garbage Man Day. So it's no surprise the neighbors returned the favor. On World Down Syndrome Day, they quietly set up blue and yellow tables with coffee and decorated donuts, all wearing crazy socks to celebrate Luke. "It brought tears to my eyes," Margo says. "We are there for one another."

The house on Oakview Court may have been passed from one generation to the next, but its story is still being written. For the Raganos, Thornwood has become a place where family lives close, kids grow up surrounded by friends, and neighbors show up for one another. Same house, new memories—and plenty more still to come.