Field Trip: Jelly Belly Factory

Spring break gives me the chance to take some of the big kids with us on our excursions, which is nice.

Eli and Brianna came with Jack, Hannah, Katie and I on our visit to the Jelly Belly Factory in Fairfield.

The older kids have been, of course, but Hannah and Katie had never been.  And we all had a great time!

See the panda picture?  It's made of jelly beans.  All throughout the tour areas, there are these magnificent pictures created from jelly beans.  They take weeks to make.

You can't take any pictures on the tour, due to rules about proprietary secrets.  So you'll have to make due with lots of pictures of the kids posed in front of various Jelly Belly vehicles.  

They've amassed quite a fleet.  Last time we were here, they had a VW Bug, but we didn't see it this time.

You have to wear hats on the tour.  Katie didn't mind, but Hannah was not pleased.  The look on her face cracks me up.

Brianna with her Mona Lisa expression.

Look familiar?  It's a famous Japanese painting.  Depicted in jelly beans.

And since I love tigers, I had to get a picture of this beautiful creature, too.

The tour has changed since the last time we were there.  It used to be a docent leading a group of about 20 people at a time, cracking jokes, explaining the process, and passing out samples at the various stages of production.

Now it's "self guided," meaning, they give you your hat, and you go upstairs on your own and wander through, looking through the windows and trying to listen to the videos on the monitors.  Large sections of the tour were completely blocked off, so instead of making a whole circle of the factory, you go about half way and then turn around and swim upstream, trying to get back out.  My friend had a double stroller, which made things challenging, since it was crowded.  Note to self:  spring break is when everybody wants to go out and have fun.

After the tour, we pulled out our picnic lunch (and the jelly bean samples!) and enjoyed the lovely spring weather while we ate.

Cheers!  I was teasing them about the headphones and said, "Make a teenager face!"  Notice the cloth napkin?  Bri made a sandwiches, and she figured out that she can get 4 sandwiches on sourdough rolls into a Tupperware cereal keeper, and she put a napkin between each one so we'd have "plates" to eat on.

After lunch, we went back in to visit the gift shop.  It was pretty crowded, but we managed to find some treasures to bring home.

My friend took this picture for me before we left.  Evidence that I really was there!

The next day, the kids wrote about our day in our field trip journal.  They were pretty excited about their souvenir t-shirts, too.  I'm already looking forward to our next adventure.


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