Typical, favorite family stories involve visits with loving grandparents, trips to amusement parks and Christmas dinners.

Favorite military family stories usually are in far-flung locations, away from extended family and often involve some type of military movement, jargon or equipment.

As PCS season swiftly approaches and many of you are prepping for moving day, I want to share with you my family’s favorite story and tale of a PCS gone woefully wrong.

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We were leaving Greensboro, N.C. for Tampa, Fla. My husband had been back just a matter of days after being gone for nearly three years to Kuwait and Iraq. He had just four months at home between each of those tours. To say we were not on the same sheet of music is an understatement.

He was determined to make money on the PCS move so he called off the professional movers and rented a U-Haul truck - the biggest one they make. He hitched his pickup truck to the back of it and filled it with household goods. I couldn’t see out of my back window for the pile of suitcases tossed in the rear.

And, there was still stuff in the house. It was very, stressful.

As we tried not to argue or walk out on each other as we haphazardly began throwing items into the trash for no better reason than the fact that they didn’t fit, my friend Kim arrived to help. I think we may have scared her.

Regardless, the pile was soon down to a single nightstand, sitting squarely in the middle of our bedroom. Kim saw the exhaustion in our faces and ran out to find us food in the wee hours of the night.

She drove away and I heard a scream from inside. Our oldest children, toddlers at the time, were running in circles around the nightstand. Our 2-year-old managed to fall and bust her head against the only piece of furniture in the house.

Seriously.

There was blood everywhere.

I tossed the babies in the car and took off for the hospital. My car was so stuffed that my husband couldn’t squeeze in. He followed us in his U-Haul with the pickup truck dragging behind.

We left every light in the house on.

The front door was wide open.

The front steps were stained with blood.

Hours later I checked my phone, which didn’t receive a signal in the hospital.

Kim had left a message.

“I don’t know where you are, but nothing good has happened here.”

By sunrise, the baby was fine, Kim was confident we were not dragged from the house bloody and beaten and we were headed down I-95 with our caravan of stuff.

The night stand was left, abandoned, by the curb.

Here’s to a stress-free, 2013 PCS season! May all your packing and unpacking be drama and injury free.