Taste of Summer

Every year, on the last Saturday of June, our local Blue Bell has a Taste of Summer celebration.

They have inflatables, tatoos, visor making, cow milking, tours of the factory and all the ice cream you can eat from 9-3.  It was free for Reese to get in and only 5 bucks for me.  The Blue Bell plant is super close to our house, so we were able to get there fairly early...too early for ice cream to be honest, but it only comes around once a year, so what the heck, right?

We started off making a pirate hat and then moved on to a face tatoo.

Scared, aren't you?  And yes, my pirate wears lipstick!



From there, we moved on to our first ice cream of the day.  Reese had cotton candy and I had Triple Chocolate something. 

After watching some singing performances, we went on the tour.  No pics because they wouldn't allow them (someone might try to nab some of their ice cream making secrets).  They were in production, so we got to see ice cream put into cartons and cartons whisked off to the freezers.  Some of the workers would look up and wave to the kids.  Not only that, inside the building, they had "flush" toilets (porta pottys outside), so we took total advantage while on the tour!

Shortly thereafter, we went for ice cream #2.  Reese had cotton candy and I had chocolate something.

She decided she wanted to jump on some inflatables, so we stopped for an ice cream (just so we'd have something to do while waiting in line, you know - Reese had a banana fudge bar and I had an ice cream sandwich) and then she jumped.



All that jumping will make a girl hungry, so we got in line for ice cream.  Reese had cotton candy (are you noticing a pattern here?) and I had Chocolate Caramel something.

We headed back to watch more performances - this time it was an ice cream eating contest - Reese was entranced!

"I could do that if they were eating cotton candy ice cream instead of ice cream sandwiches"

She wasn't quite ready to go, so we went to make a princess tiara, milk the cow (fake) and jump on some more inflatables.



Fact I learned while on "the tour" - Blue Bell doesn't own their own herd of cows, so they buy all the milk for their ice cream.  I woulda thought they had cows - hmmm.

By now, we'd been there about 3 1/2 hours, so we decided to head home.  But not before 1 more stop for ice cream.  Reese had cotton candy and I had chocolate something.

Neither one of us got sick from the excessive amount of ice cream we consumed, but we did skip lunch!!