I'm not sure who won, but we will be losing these white elephants

As I mentioned yesterday, every year on Christmas Eve Chris' family drives to his aunt's ranch for dinner and a white elephant gift exchange. This year we spent much of Christmas Eve day unsure about whether we would go, given that it took us over FOUR hours to make the normally one hour trip between our house and Chris' parents' place. Chris' aunt called us every hour or two with road updates. ("Mike just got home, and he says highway 99 is completely clear." "Travis is here now and he can tell you what the roads look like now.") Finally we decided that the thaw that had been going on all day made it likely that we would not run into any problems en route, so we packed ourselves into the car and headed to Camille's place.

After dinner we gathered in the family room for the white elephant gift exchange. (For those who do not partake in this particular tradition, click over here for last year's or here for a Wikipedia explanation.) Ada, who had never done this before but is very into distributing and opening presents, was very excited to help.

When it was Chris' turn to open a present, he got a travel mug. When it was stolen from him he opened what we started to call the transvestite monkey angel:

I was going to dig the angel out of the car to photograph it in its full "glory," but the idea of it in my house creeped me out too much and I decided to settle for this photo from the gift exchange evening.

Chris' dad opened a package with two hula girls in it. I coveted them (thinking of course how cool they would look on the dashboard of the minivan we will be buying next year) but they were stolen by Uncle Mike. When it was my turn to pick, Ada chose a heavy box for me. It contained a metal desk accessory that looked like a little guy sitting at a desk. I didn't want it, so I wasn't heartbroken when it was stolen by Travis a moment later. Ada then chose for me a package that turned out to be a hefty paperback book: The Shooter's Bible. I am not exactly sure what year it was from (maybe 1974) but it was not the latest edition. Not that this matters. Ada was thrilled, seeing it as a coloring book.

Lovin' up hte shooter's bible. Thanks Uncle Mike!

We left both of these "treasures" in Chris' trunk when we got home on Friday afternoon. We figured we could leave them there until Ada forgot about them, but then she saw this this afternoon as I loaded groceries into the car. Oops. I suspect the angel and gun book might disappear mysteriously, like the nuk.