Leah and Willie Randall have never been what you'd call a "traditional" couple. Case in point: the pair from Rochester, Washington, tied the knot after spending just six days together. So when they jointly decided they were done having kids after their third child was born, and Willie planned to get a vasectomy, what happened next wasn’t a total surprise to friends and family.
Almost immediately, Leah started secretly planning a surprise vasectomy party for Willie to commemorate the big day.
She tells CafeMom that she got the idea from a news story she read a while back, and she thought her husband would get a kick out of it, too.
"Initially I saw an article a couple years ago from a lady in the UK that threw her husband a vasectomy party and I thought it was hilarious," Leah says. "So when the time came for my husband, I knew it was more than fitting."
She made sure she had all the makings of a memorable party — including a 'sperm'-covered cake that read, 'Snip, Snip, Hooray!'
"I went to a local bakery that does custom cakes and explained exactly what I was looking for," Leah shares with CafeMom.
And if you're wondering what the cake baker's reaction was to the "unique" request, Leah says it definitely got a laugh.
"Luckily, [the baker] had a great sense of humor and got a kick out of it," she adds, "but said she had a ton of people lifting an eyebrow while decorating."
Next, she set out to have custom tees made up for her kids to wear when her husband came home from his procedure.
Leah was sure to make the surprise bash a pretty private one — it was just her kids, Tucker, Danner, and Eleanor, plus her mom, who came over to watch the kids while she was at the doctor’s office with her husband.
And each of them donned a custom T-shirt labeled “Swim Team Survivor,” along with the year of their conception on the front. Oh, and of course, each one had an image of a little "swimmer" on the front, to drive the theme home even more.
'We like to go all out when celebrating,' says Leah, 'so I treated the celebration like any other.'
Still, she says, “I do wonder what the lady on Etsy thought when I sent her the designs for the shirts!”
Before the appointment, Leah handed her husband his own T-shirt that read 'The swim team may have been cut, but the coach will never retire!'
"I gave my husband his shirt when we arrived at the appointment in the parking lot!" she shares. "He got a kick out of it and the staff thought it was hilarious!"
(And judging by the photos, he clearly wore it proudly.)
But she was taken by surprise herself when the doctor told her she could make the last snip — and was actually pretty excited by it.
“My husband has always been the one to cut the umbilical cords, but I got to perform the last one!” she says, adding that the whole procedure was actually pretty interesting because the doctor was explaining what he was doing the whole way through.
Once the couple arrived back at their house, 'post-snip,' Leah's husband burst out laughing once he saw his kids — and that cake!
Although Leah says she may have gone "a little overboard" with the party idea, she has no regrets.
"I would do it again in a heartbeat, since it was worth celebrating!" she tells CafeMom.
It certainly is!
