CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — A Flour Bluff family turned a simple holiday tradition into an unforgettable memory and a viral sensation. Cloye McGinley, a grandmother, took part in her family’s annual white elephant gift exchange, unaware that this year’s gifts were anything but ordinary.
"It looks like the one I painted!" McGinley said during the exchange, realizing that several of the gifts looked oddly familiar.
Gift after gift revealed items from her own home, including a hand-painted ceramic frog. At first, McGinley didn’t suspect a thing.
“And then it hit me,” she said. “I didn’t realize… I just thought everybody shopped at Hobby Lobby.”
Her granddaughter, Kaylee Hulse, was the mastermind behind the prank, who gathered and wrapped several of McGinley’s items for the exchange.
“I gathered a bunch of items, random ones, and then we took it over, wrapped them up, and she had no idea,” Hulse said.
The moment was captured on video and uploaded to TikTok, where it quickly went viral, getting over 16 million views. The video earned Hulse $1,000, which she gifted to her grandmother.
“We always have fun in our family and she loves it,” Hulse said.
But the generosity didn’t stop there. Hulse presented her grandmother with an additional $1,500 she had earned from the video.
“Kaylee, you don’t need to do this, honey,” McGinley said in the video.
“I promise you, everyone would be upset if I didn’t,” Hulse replied. “You earned that, fair and square.”
The family says the prank and the memories they created mean more than any gift or amount of money.
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