Jelly Belly

As many of you who have talked to me since we moved out here may know, the Jelly Belly factory is literally less than 5 miles from my house.  Now this isn't some small, rinky dink factory where they only make some of the Jelly Bellies, this is the one and only Jelly Belly factory in the world!  At least some things are still made in the U.S.!  Anyway, my parents came into town to visit on Sept. 28 and were planning on staying for about 2 weeks.  We didn't have plans for everyday that they were here, so we decided that going to the Jelly Belly factory would be a fun little excursion.  I didn't really know what to expect, but let me tell you, I loved it!  We took a free tour of the entire factory and had a great time!  Who knew so much went into making such a small little jelly bean!  After the tour of the factory, they give everyone a free bag of Jelly Bellies which I proceeded to eat immediately!  I was just glad that some of their odd flavors weren't in the free bag...like barf, babywipe, or booger.  Yuck!  I wasn't brave enough to try any of those nasty flavors either but we did buy a bag of belly flops!  Belly flops are the reject Jelly Bellies...the ones that don't look right!  There is actually a person sitting next to a conveyor belt sorting out the good jelly beans from the bad ones and the bad ones (aka the belly flops) are a lot cheaper than the normal ones, but they taste the same.  At one point on the tour, we went into this huge room where they were making tangerine flavored Jelly Bellies.  The entire room smelled like tangerines...I would hate to be in there when they were making the barf flavored one.  Nasty!  Here are some fun pictures from our little adventure...Brian didn't get to go because he was working hard but don't you worry...He'll go before we leave here!

 They made us wear these funny hats...

 

Mom and the Jelly Belly bug.