We left at eight in the morning. My mom pulled up the directions on the car's GPS. One day and seven hours. Wow, that was a long trip. It took us about two days to get there, stopping for a hotel. And food, yummy, delicious, fast food. My parents chatted the whole way about the park.

               "I hired the extra crew this morning. I told them to go ahead and start the work on the inn." My mom said. "Oh, good, do you have materials picked out?" My dad asked. "No, not yet, right now they are checking everything out. Fixing the electricity and plumbing. When I get there, I will take time to go shopping. I googled a store that's nearby." How exactly did you decorate a Christmas Inn? I guess that was something I hadn't thought about. "We have 200 rooms to decorate, so we can get a deal for buying the materials in bulk." My mom said.

              "I did, however, make a big purchase. Okay, so in the town square, I'm going to have a variety of people. One of the guys I hired is a lumberjack or whatever. He makes beautiful things out of wood. He's going to make all the beds. I'm going for a rustic theme. I also hired a few ladies who make quilts. There will be a quilt shop as one of the shops." See, they have lumberjacks in Colorado, I knew it.

                  I realized that my mom was going to be creating a ton of new jobs! I mean, she'd need people to run all the rides. To upkeep and clean the park. People to run the inn. Clean the rooms. Cook the food. Then she was taking people who made beautiful things and giving them a place to sell them. Well, even though I wasn't game for this move, my mom was doing a good thing. I just had wished she'd wait a year.

               "Honey, you're awfully quiet back there." My dad commented. "Just thinking." I said. "Bout what?" My mom asked, turning to look at me. "Well, I am going to the University of Florida, you know that, I'm just gonna have to go back. Why didn't you wait a year? You could've saved up even more money." My mom frowned. "I guess because I wanted you to come. I'd miss you. I was hoping you'd come, love it, and not want to leave. But I don't wanna hold you back from your dreams either, and if UF is your dream, then you should go." She said.

            "But this makes no sense. It would have been easier on me if we had just stayed one more year. Now I have to pack everything back up and move it all back! Now I can't stay at home while I go to school. And I have to try to get into the student dorms, but I didn't put my name on the list, so now it might be too late."

         My mom sighed. "You're absolutely right." She didn't say she would sell the land or the house because she and my dad would need to talk about that. And they put in a lot of money already. I mean, what would my mom do with two hundred quilts and beds? Every time I got angry or fed up with my mom, she made me feel worse for saying anything. Maybe I'd just keep my big mouth shut. "Never mind." I said, shaking my head. "No, not never mind. We said we would support you when you came back. I just...don't know what to say anymore." We rode the rest of the ride in silence.

       We finally pulled into a beautiful old Victorian home. There was a construction truck outside and work going on. A man came out to greet us. "Hi, you must be Simon." My dad said, shaking his hand. Then he shook my mom's hand. "It's nice to meet you, I'm Clay and this is my wife, Helen. This is our daughter Alexis." Once we had exchanged pleasantries, we went inside.

      It looked as if work had been going on in full swing.  There was no furniture, obviously, because it was all still in the U-Haul. But I could see how the house might be great. "Oh, this is my son Tyler. He's going to be working with me this summer." Said Clay. "It's nice to meet you, Tyler." My dad said. We had to take stock of everything. Clay and his crew were doing a lot of work on the house. But we had to get everything unloaded.

   "It's time for dinner. Lex, why don't you take the truck, go into town, and pick up pizza?" Said my dad. I know he was trying to give me an out. "I don't know where town is..." I said. "Tyler, why don't you take a break and go show her around town?" Clay said. "Sure thing, Dad." He wiped his hands on his jeans, setting his tool belt on the bar.

   We got into my dad's truck. The U-Haul driver had left the keys with my dad. He left. Tyler pointed me in the direction of town. I looked at him out of the corner of my eye. He had been working with his dad for a while, it looked. He was strong. He had shaggy brown hair that fell into his green eyes. He bit his lip, and two dimples popped out. He had these chiseled features. In fact, he looked like he could be one of the guys hanging on the poster on my wall. I mean, Brandon was cute, but it wasn't hard to see that Tyler was a hunk.

   My phone rang. I hit a button on the console and answered it. "Hello?" I answered. "Hey, babe. I miss you already!" said Brandon's deep voice. "Brandon! I miss you too." I said. "Well, how do you like it?" He asked. "I don't know yet, silly, we just got here. I'm heading to get Pizza for dinner, but I'll keep you posted." I said. "Alright. Well, I'll let you get back to it. I'm about to head out to the beach on my board. But call me before bed. I love you." "I love you too! Have fun." I said, hanging up the phone.

       "Sorry about that." I said. "Oh, it's no problem, it must be tough moving. You know, leaving all of your friends behind and stuff." He said. "Yeah, it is, I'll be a senior this year. It stinks to leave when I was almost done." I said. "Oh, hey, cool, I'll be a senior too." He said. "Sweet, how do you like your high school? Is it big?" I asked. "No, we probably have a few hundred in our graduating class. But I really like it." He said. "Oh, that's cool. Play any sports?" I asked. "Well, at school I'm on the baseball team. And I also snowboard outside of school."

        My eyes lit up. "Is that kind of like surfing?" He laughed. "I dunno, I've never surfed before. But tell ya what. You give snowboarding a try and let me know what you think." He pointed to a turn off. "This is the center of town, this strip is where pretty much everything is. There's a pizza place right here." He pointed, and I pulled in.

        Once the pizza had been ordered, he turned to me. "So where did you move from?" He asked. "Florida." I said. "Ah. I figured it was something like that, with the surfing. So what's the one thing you're going to miss the most?" He asked.  "Other than my friends and boyfriend? I think the beach. It was so peaceful." I said.

        "Ya know the snow is peaceful too." He said. "But I imagine it's quiet." He nodded. "Yeah, snow is quiet. But it's beautiful." He said. "I have never actually seen snow. We don't get any in Florida." I said. "Yeah, it gets pretty chilly, but we are used to it here, so we have clothes for it." I nodded. "My mom sold her convertible, perfect for Florida, iffy for Colorado. She wants to buy an SUV with big snow tires." I shook my head. "Couldn't hurt, if you've never driven on snow, it can be slippery. But the snowplow guys do a pretty good job of keeping things clean." The pizza guy walked out holding two pizzas in his hand.

       Once I had received the pizzas, we headed back home. "It must be tough moving this close to your senior year." Tyler said. "You have no idea. I am going to UF, so after this year, I'll have to move back. Isn't that a rip?" I asked. "Yeah, totally, I think your mom hopes you'll stay. But for the record, I think it's totally cool that she's opening a theme park here." "Maybe a theme park is cool, but a Christmas theme park? Seriously? Who needs Christmas that much!?"  I asked. "Okay, you got me there." He said, laughing.

       We pulled back into the house. "Thanks for the tour." I said. "No problem, listen, I'm helping my dad this summer. I'm supposed to be painting all the rooms at your house. Let me know what color you want. I have some swatches I can show you when we get back." He said. "Oh sure." I said getting out and following him into the house. We were all sleeping downstairs for the time being, so the guys could finish the work upstairs. They were refinishing the original hardwood floors.

      I sat the pizza on the bar and followed him to the swatches. After I looked, I found the color I liked. The exact color of the ocean. "This one. It was tough because a few of them reminded me of home." I sighed, handing them back to him. "Don't worry, I got you." He said, nodding. They left, and we settled in to eat pizza.