What's a typical weekend with the kids like recently?

I didn't have too much going on this weekend, so that destined me to hang out and entertain my 5 year old and 1 year old, trying to give Meg a break from the kids as long as possible.

With my 5 year old...

• Soccer in the park. We got da gear, foldable 6' goals, Michael's present for Christmas.
• Biking to the jidoukan (kids center) and letting both loose there. Thank God for kids centers. They have very nice ones in most cities in Japan, safe and well-equipped. Michael got to bike on real roads for the first time ever on Saturday. Mostly stable. Only crashed into me once.
  
• Making "Pythagora" devices, which are sort of like obstacle courses for marbles. Good test of patience, like dominos arrays, for both son and father "If that @#$% fails one more time, I'm gonna...Oh sorry Michael. Don't talk like that. If you're curious, see the masters do it. We build stuff, but nothing like the experts on the NHK TV show.
• The board game of LIFE. Loves the money. Never buys insurance.
• Battleship. The old navy guessing game. Cheats consistently.
• Transformers card game. One of the best games for a 5 year old I've ever seen. Great for learning math because we can do "two card attack" where we each play two cards and add them up to see who has more.
• Building Pokemon castles with Legos house set, a gift we got from a friend who works for Lego Japan. The standard array is boring. Michael does wonders with rearranging his multiple sets of legos and then putting his Pokemon collection figures all over them to create stories.
  
• Sumo on the futons. Soccer on the futons. Rolling people into sushi with the futons.
• Reading Curious George and other books for bed time. He gets a sticker for each book he reads successfully to me. 10 stickers gets him a Pokemon plastic figure.
  

With my 1 year 8 month old...

• Sit in a sandbox and watch her put sand on her head and usually mine too.
• Swings, slides, other playground staples
• Crying because her dad and brother are playing soccer and ignoring her
• Dancing to music or DVDs. The kids center has a great dancing time for pre-school kids and she absolutely loves it.
  
• Attacking her brother's legos creations (well, she thinks she's helping)
• Playing tea party with Dad (she doesn't really get into this yet)
• Watching Shimajiro videos
• Crying again because her dad and brother are playing soccer and ignoring her

Something like that, all weekend long.