Those Sainsbury's Lego cards

For the last couple of weeks I've found myself immersed in a new obsession - desperately trying to complete two Sainsbury's Lego trading cards albums. I'm sure that most people reading this post will be familiar with them! Our first encounter with the cards was when my parents sent some packets to the children in the post. They were thrilled with them, they divided them up fairly and only had one duplicate between them, and played all sorts of games. They are really fun cards, each one depicts a different mini figure and they can also be used for games like snap, dominoes and scissors, paper, stone.

But the main reason for collecting them is to trade them with others and slot them into the special album. A couple of weeks later we went to visit the other set of grandparents, who had another stack of cards for them and also the albums. The children now had plenty of cards, but of course once we'd sorted through them, taken out duplicates, and made sure that both albums were as full as they could be, they still had lots missing.

I started to notice that parenting forums like Mumsnet were full of threads with parents busily swapping cards for their children, and Facebook was full of posts from people looking for the last elusive cards. I had promised myself that I wouldn't get swept up in it, but I couldn't stop myself as my perfectionist tendencies kicked in, and I knew that I'd have to try my very best to complete their albums.

I contacted a couple of friends that I knew were regular Sainsbury's shoppers and would be collecting the cards. Thanks to their generosity I was able to fill lots of gaps in the albums, but there were still a few left that I just couldn't find.

As the obsession with completing the albums grew, I started to wonder who was most bothered about the cards, me or the children. They did take their pile of swaps into school along with a list of the numbers that they needed, but they weren't very successful and seemed to come home with fewer cards than they started with. Then as the number of cards required finally began to dwindle to a manageable amount it began to seem even more important. I sent out messages to family and e-mailed around the school mums. Fortunately I wasn't the only Mum out there working hard on behalf of their children! Thanks to a friend of my sisters, we finally slotted in the remaining four cards at the weekend. We still have a small pile of swaps left, and so I've been keeping an eye on our local Facebook group to offer out any that people desperately need to complete the collection, as a way of paying back the generosity that we've had from others.

The children are thrilled with their completed albums and they both love looking through them, so I think that they are appreciative. The albums really are very good, with lots of interesting facts and reading on different topics. It must have been a really successful promotion for Sainsbury's, as it's definitely been a hot topic of conversation both online and offline - but I must admit that I am hoping they don't run it again!

Have your children been collecting the cards? Have they completed their albums yet, or has it been you doing all the work?