Factory tours

Claire and Elaina are at that stage of life where they ask a lot of questions.  They are particularly interested in how and where things are made.   Where are cookies, bikes, shoes, cars and most everything else made?  Well, a factory of course!   So to them a factory is a very interesting and intriguing place.  Natalie got them so interested in factories that Claire told her preschool teacher that factories were one of the things she was most thankful for.  Over the Christmas break we decided to take the kids to the Jelly Belly factory.  It is about an hour and a half away, but it was a nice break for everyone to just sit for a while and chill out.  The website did warn us that the waits can be longer around holidays, but we still decided to go.  The tours are free, but we did have to wait for about an hour.  The best part was the free samples!  Especially the sample bar, where you can choose 3 flavors to try.  There were so many choices!  We learned lots of interesting jelly belly facts like what their 3 top sellers are.  Can you guess?  They are Very Cherry, Buttered popcorn and black licorice - can you believe it?  You can't take pictures inside, so all of the pictures we took were outside.  Here they are in front of the huge inflatable jelly bean. 

And the sign, we all got cool hats to wear.

I think this is the 10 seconds that he wore the hat.  They want everyone to wear the hats during the tour - including babies.  That is pretty much impossible.

The factory is at One Jelly Belly Lane.

The next "factory" tour isn't officially a factory, but Claire and Elaina think it is.  We took all of the kids to Krispy Kreme Donuts where they have the big window where the kids can watch the donuts being made.  They don't have one in San Jose yet (coming soon), so we went up to Mountain View.  They were thrilled from the start!

You can see the whole process from when they put them in the oil and they flip....

and move along the conveyor belt...

to the best part....

the icing waterfall!!

Or maybe the best part is eating them at the end.  They all picked out the donuts they wanted to eat, no free samples here, but they did get another cool hat.

The girls both got sprinkles of course, I think the pink color had something to do with their choice. 

Andrew tried a creme filled one and liked it.

Grant liked the donuts, but was more intrigued by the camera case.

Let me know if you know if any more "factory" like tours around here.