adventures of the mango-picking kind . . .

Wednesday afternoons are always a little bit crazy. The kids leave at around 2ish and Bible Study/prayer meeting starts at 4. Yeah, not much time to do much of anything. And normally I try to rush around and get all my school work done and classes planned for the next day. But today I threw that all to the wind.
You see, the other day Veronica and I noticed something while we were sitting in devotions. Through the open chapel door we noticed the trees in the back pasture were loaded with ripe mangoes. Don't worry, we were still paying attention to the Bible story!
And so it was decided that today was the day to go find mangoes. So we lassoed Elmer and the boys into helping us, since they're a little bit better at the whole tree-climbing thing than any of us gals.

Heading out - fully equipped

Sadly, the "mangoes de oro," the great big juicy ones, that Veronica and I thought we had seen were still green. However, the other tree had a few ready ones.

First ripe mango of the season!!

I have learned to like the green mangoes the way they eat them down here, drowned in salt and hot sauce and maybe some soy sauce, but there is still something about a perfectly tree-ripened mango.

There is a reason we hauled the guys with us! 

Elmer enjoying a fresh one while supervising Carlos in the tree

Miguel sucking on the seed for the last little bit of deliciousness

Believe me, they were worth the snag in the dress from the barbed wire fence, the bee stings, the hundreds of little "hitchhikers" we had to pick out of our dresses afterwards, the thorns that are so big they cut your foot through you flip-flop, and even the lovely aftereffects of eating three ripe mangoes in a row. Probably should have known better than that! And it was even worth having to work later into the night to finish up school stuff. That's what coffee is for!

My little cowboy, just 'cuz he's so CUTE!!