When Ariel Winter officially says goodbye to "Modern Family" next year, she'll have spent half her life on the long-running sitcom.

Speaking on Thursday's episode of "The Ellen DeGeneres Show," Winter, 21, opened up to guest host Stephen "tWitch" Boss about preparing to say goodbye to the fictional family she's been with since she was 11 years old.

"It's sad, obviously. It's not something that we want," she said. "We love each other and we love our show and obviously we'd love to make many more. But it's been 11 years and I think everybody's ready to do new things but it's obviously going to be really sad that we won't get to see each other every week."

She continued: "We love everybody: we love the cast, we love the crew, we have the best. And it's been half my life. I'll be 22 when we end the show at the beginning of next year. It's so amazing to have a job like this with people that you love for 11 years, the amount of grateful that we all are is ridiculous."

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The victory lap season for "Modern Family," which began in 2009 and became an instant hit, will culminate in 2020. Viewers first met Winter and the other "Family" kids as small children, but they've grown up on-camera.

The youngest Dunphy, Luke (Nolan Gould, about to turn 21), now towers over his on-screen sisters. Lily Tucker-Pritchett (now Aubrey Anderson-Emmons, 12, who was cast in the role in Season 3) was adopted as a baby in the pilot and now drops one-liners like a comedic pro. And Haley Dunphy (Sarah Hyland, 29), once a reckless, ditzy teenager, is now the mom of newborn twins.

To Winter, that new generation of little ones brings everything full circle.

"We have new young cast members. We have babies!" Winter said. "We had three sets of babies the other day and I love them... And I was in the scene with the babies and I was so excited and I'm wheeling them in the stroller and of course the one day all three sets of babies didn't want me. It was so sad. We had to give them back and I had to push the stroller with dolls, which is not quite as cute."

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ABC entertainment president Karey Burke said in February that producers have "big plans" for the final season and that she would be happy if that included laying the ground for a potential spinoff.

"I would love one. No one would be happier if there were one," she said, offering no details.

For the final season, "there are some surprises and big milestones coming. They intend to really go out big, so it would be terrific if a spinoff were part of that, but I haven’t heard anything" specifically, Burke said.