LIVE OAK, Texas – Priscilla Siniff says every April Fools’ Day “creeps up on me. I’m never ready for it.”
Since the mid-1990s, Siniff's son, John, and his wife, Monica, in Virginia, have pulled off ingenious pranks.
Yet now, with his mother confined indoors like so many others, they decided to send a traditional Mother's Day serenade of mariachis outside her home.
"This has been wonderful. It's lifted my spirits. I love you kids so much," Siniff said, speaking to her son and daughter-in-law on Facetime.
"I wish I could hug you. I can hug you this way," she said as she embraced her arms.
Siniff said seeing his mother's smile was "pure gold."
Her son, a communications executive in Washington, D.C., said,
“This will be an April Fools’ Day that we will all remember and hopefully look back with joy instead of fear and trepidation.”
He said their latest April Fools’ stunt tops a long list of pranks.
“Some of the pranks were epic. Others were a little slap-dash, but all were devious, though delivered with love,” John said.
Some of the pranks included having pizzas delivered every 15 minutes and leaving a colorful basket of Easter eggs at her door, with raw eggs and the promise of $100 bills inside them.
"I even made up a viral prank going on in which people were giving away money in Easter egg baskets," John said. "But she didn't bite."
When he and his wife were expecting Luke, their second child, John had a stork put in his mother’s front yard bearing a baby named “Fulgencio Constantine.”
Neighbors offered their congratulations, he said, but they also wondered if that was really Siniff's new grandson's name. It wasn't.
One year, John convinced his mother that allergy activists were waging a campaign to mow down Texas bluebonnets, her favorite flower. He finally told her it was another of their April Fools’ jokes.
“Mom’s reaction each year is priceless,” John Siniff said."The effort is always paid off by the laughter and the stories we have a lifetime to share."