Birthday celebrations, Santa Monica fun and sad goodbyes

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We woke up this morning, the last day of our amazing holiday, with two twelve year olds! Our beautiful, crazy daughter Izzy and her loveable bear, Freddie! (Yes he joined us on our journey and has seen the inside of many hotel rooms!) Izzy's favourite meal of the day is breakfast so we found a lovely little restaurant overlooking the Beverly Wilshire hotel where we ate runny eggs and crispy bacon with freshly squeezed juice cocktails. I couldn't pass up the opportunity to drink a 'Pretty Woman' champagne cocktail - it would've been rude not to!

Today was all about Izzy and having the best last day of our holiday possible. Izzy called the shots and we started off at Malibu beach. It wasn't what we expected and we much prefer Santa Monica which was to be our next stop. Izzy has been looking forward to hiring a trike with Bruce to ride along the beachside cycle path so that was our first port of call. Lily and I hired roller blades and we were all soon on our way towards Venice Beach. I spent my entire childhood on my yellow and blue Raleigh roller boots and loved nothing more than hurtling down the road from top to bottom, whizzing round the corner and hoping there were no cars coming! I still love to skate and one of my favourite places to take my roller blades is South Perth foreshore. It's been a while since I've been but Lily had so much fun today she has promised she will come with me more often when we get home! Izzy and Bruce loved their trikes and we had the best afternoon.

Anyone who knows me will know how much I love to make birthday cakes for my kids. This is the first time in 15 years that I haven't made one so I was a little disappointed. Izzy however was perfectly happy with her frozen yogurt that she has been dreaming about since she was seven! Although she doesn't remember much of our last visit to LA, Tutti Frutti stuck in her mind. It's a 'help yourself' factory with lots of delicious flavours of frozen yogurt and toppings. The caramel kettle corn and the watermelon were my favourites.

Another place that Izzy remembered was Barney's Beanery and we had promised to take her there for her birthday dinner. She chose the fajitas which certainly didn't disappoint and we all enjoyed the mozzarella sticks and loaded potato skins for our starter. We had a lovely dinner, reminiscing about our holiday and choosing our favourite, worst and funniest moments. Prettiest places, nicest food, best rides, best place, happiest experience - there has been so much to choose from! We have all had the most amazing time. The two sickness bugs, four colds and countless blisters have done little to detract from the wonderful memories we have made along the way. None of us are ready to come home and have all agreed we could be professional travellers! We have all missed our gorgeous little cats and can't wait to see Aspen and Blizzard on Sunday. So, it is with a little sadness that we say goodbye to this great country and look forward to the next time we visit. (Which won't be for a very long time unless I get a crazy book deal or Lotto comes our way!) Reality beckons tomorrow with our twenty seven hour flight home. It is the stuff nightmares are made of!

Thanks to my beautiful family for helping to make this trip so special and thanks to you all for joining us on our epic adventure. Catch you on the flip side.

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