Trip to Woodland

A couple of weeks back we went to go visit our teammates who are now living in Woodland for the time being. It was nice to spend some time with them as we've only seen them a few times since they came back to the states a year ago last November. Micah is a year and a half younger than Caleb and a year and a half older than Abby. It's fun to watch Micah and Caleb play now, when we were all in Niger he was still so much smaller than Caleb, so they didn't play too much together then.

The first day we visited the Sacramento Zoo and then the day after that we went to...

the Jelly Belly Factory!!!

I can't tell you how many times growing up we drove by that place on our way to Stockton to visit family. I always wanted to stop and visit...finally, I got to!

When we arrived they were filming a commercial for the Sacramento River Cats, so this guy and the big Jelly Belly were running around for the camera. Micah got in on a little of the action.

He LOVES mascots! (We took him to an HSU basketball game awhile back, all he talked about afterwards was the Lumberjack, he called him "The BIG Guy".)

The big Jelly Belly and the River Cat went along on part of the tour with us...I think it was Micah's favorite part.

Harry Potter in Jelly Bellies.

We had to wear these hats while we were on the tour. For privacy reasons we couldn't take pictures while we were on the tour. We saw where they got packaged to be sent out, we saw the machines where the outer jelly bean coating was applied, we saw where they kept all their ingredients, we learned a little bit about the food scientists that work on coming up with the different flavors, we saw the machine that sorts out the Belly Flops from the other jelly beans, and we learned that all the Jelly Bellies that fall on the floor get swept up and sent to a pig farm for the pigs to eat. We had a few samples along the way and then at the end of the tour they gave us each a small box of Jelly Bellies and a sample of candy corn.

Kid in a candy store.

Before we left we went back to their store to try some more samples and buy some Belly Flops :)