Dull night in work and cool kid's stuff

Well. . . Despite my big machine fetish, spending the evening on a plant trial at work is not proving as exciting as I had thought. More on what my work actually invovles some other time, but given this gift of free(ish) time, I thought I'd take the opportunity to add links to a couple of things I like to do with my kids:

• Heroclix. This is a lot of fun for grown-ups as well as kids, especially if you like comic books. The big advantage for kids is that there are basic rules which are still a lot of fun but remove a lot of the complexities. My daughter is 6 and loves playing this with me.
• Kids of Catan. Nice, simple boardgame. Based on the complex adult game Catan. This is one for the whole family as my 3 year old son has just about the staying power for a whole game. The game pieces are a lot of fun to play with on their own and in a nice touch, the instruction encourage you to do just that.
• Toy knights. A big castle, some knights and a dart gun and you can recreate Agincourt! Not quite, but almost. Endless hours spent with my son setting them up and knocking them down again. Papo rock.