Sunday Dinner v3.0 and other updates

We've really had a busy week! Hosting the baby shower and the Summer Deck Party were huge commitments and I'm definitely breathing a sigh of relief that those events are checked off my list. In addition, we've also been working simultaneously on the sale of our condo and the purchase of our new home.

The Condo

We have been de-cluttering like crazy, and I also bought a Groupon for professional cleaning so that we could really get our place spic and span before it goes on the market. The two-woman cleaning crew arrived on Friday afternoon and stayed for about three hours, at which time we were faced with a dilemma... how much were we supposed to tip them?! I've never had a cleaning service before so I had no idea what was typical. But in the end the ladies did a really amazing job and since we got such a good deal on the Groupon we decided to tip them pretty generously. I found out subsequently that many people do not tip their cleaning person, but instead give them a tip at the end of the year, but since this was a one-time thing for us I feel good about how we handled it.

On Sunday we had appointments to interview some local area real estate agents, mainly to get a sense of what they thought our condo would be worth. Our goal was to have a friend take pictures and then list it ourselves. However, once we met with the first realtor we became pretty overwhelmed by how time consuming the listing and sale process could be. And we also liked the agent very much, so in the end we decided it would be a better decision to just hire her and let her move forward with the sale of our condo. The listing should be live next week!

The House

Stew's dad and my parents both came up this week to visit Snoqualmie Ridge and see the lot and floor plan that we are considering. They all absolutely loved the model home and thought it would be a really good fit for us. We also took a good amount of time walking and measuring the lot that we like to make sure it will be a good location and have a decent sized yard once the house is built. We are very, very excited and feel confident about our choice to move to the Snoqualmie Ridge community. So we'll probably be making an offer this week!

Sunday Dinner

Matt and Alissa came by on Sunday evening so Matt could photograph the condo with his fancy-pants camera, and then we continued our Sunday Dinner tradition at La Isla in Ballard. This restaurant is very popular and I've eaten Puerto Rican cuisine here a couple times before and always thought it was delicious.

This time I decided to try the Camarones Entrees which has butterfly prawns sauteed in olive oil, white wine, and butter served with Al Ajillo garlicy garlic sauce. Stew got the special which had three types of meat including pork, chicken and beef. Each entree is served with rice and beans, tostones, mixed greens and mojito sauce. Stew was not a fan of the tostones, which are fried plantains, but we both agreed that the rice and beans were probably the best we've ever had.

Dinner was a great way to catch up and celebrate moving forward with some very significant events in our lives. It was a SUPER busy week and weekend, but we really got a lot accomplished. We've really looking forward to seeing how things unfold with the house and the condo... stay tuned!