Happy Solstice

We had a nice, quiet Solstice at home. Before dinner, we did a short ritual using pine cones from our yard. We turned out all the lights and had just this candle burning. Then we blew it out and talked about how this is the longest night of the year, an how now the days would start getting longer again. Then we relit just the single candle and each chose a pine cone and talked about what we want to leave behind in the dark half of the year.
Then it was on to the feast! Well, it wasn't exactly a feast, and kindof an odd menu, but here is how it got inspired.... On a whim, I put in "sun" as a title word in Recipezaar to see what I would get. I noticed recipes with sundried tomatoes coming up and thought, hey, what a great idea for an ingredient. So I found a recipe for a meatloaf using them and went from there. The menu was:
Turkey Meatloaf with sundried tomatoes
Broccoli and Cauliflower with "cheese" sauce - it was kindof yellow, so I figured it worked
New Potatoes with herbs and lemon juice - I am not a huge lemon fan, but it went well with this meal

The knife man - wow, does he look tired.
Orion says, look, I have a big boy plate.
And for dessert... orange jello jigglers that were supposed to look like suns. This was the closest cutter I could find.
I am starting to find out that present opening pictures pretty much all look alike, but for the record, here is the squirt opening a gift.
He noticed this one made a noise when shaken, and he declared it marbles (it was a puzzle set).
This is what Ron thought of the proceedings. :(
Yay for new puzzles!
But this was the biggest hit I think. Officially from Grandma Gloria and Grandpa Vern. Yeah, it is plastic crap, but if there is a wooden castle out there, I am sure it is way more than they would have paid. I decided to give it to him on Solstice instead of Christmas Eve because I figured I would have a hard time getting him to bed when I wanted to be getting stockings and such over with LOL.