Tips for selling your house in 27 days

 1. Find a realtor who sold a house like yours. I reviewed all the sold house listings for the last year. I was looking for a house sold in "as-is" condition. I found a couple examples. I picked the realtor for the house that sold the quickest. I took that as a sign that it was priced well. Then, take your realtor's advice for pricing and marketing strategy. 

2. Create designated zones in your house for: 

We sold our house

We did it!

Just a quick recap.

On December 24th, our house alarm went off while we were in the Midwest. We had a very frustrating experience trying to figure out what was happening. As we were sitting waiting for church, I turned to Glenn and said, Let's just sell it. He said yes. I went to work on a list of what would need to happen to get it done before we left January 30th for a 5 week trip.

I researched mailing services, realtors, storage facilities, and clean out companies.

We returned from the Midwest on January 2nd and went right to work getting the house ready to show a realtor. 

1/21/23 Coco Cay

 We had a "perfect day at Coco Cay" - Royal Caribbean's private island. 

We were ready to go as soon as the ship was cleared. We upgraded to the Coco Beach Club area. It's a private beach club with an infinity edge pool, restaurant, and beach area. We found good chairs on the beach right by the pool. 

The day was perfect - warm and slightly cloudy. The restaurant has a very nice sit down lunch menu. Glenn had the surf and turf - filet mignon with Bahamian lobster. It was very good. I had the fried lobster sandwich. It was a good and unique way to eat lobster. We loved the appetizer bento boxes with shrimp, ceviche, and three Mediterranean dips with veggies and pita.

 I read a book and we spent most of the day in the pool. 

We got back in time to shower and change for dinner to Giovanni's - the Italian restaurant. We really liked it on the Odyssey and were not disappointed here on the Wonder of the Seas. We enjoyed the Italian salad, giant meatball, and stromboli as appetizers. Glenn had the lasagna and I had the chicken parm. Overall, a great dinner. We popped up to the Mason Jar for PB&J Old Fashioneds and to listen to the band. The show was the Effectors II. We saw Effectors on the Odyssey. Royal Caribbean created their own gang of superheroes.

 It's a fun show with a lot of technology. After dinner, we had a last drink at Boleros and off to bed. 

Disembarkation was super easy this morning. They want you to wait in your room until you are notified via the App that it's time to disembark. Very cool. It was very easy because they had facial recognition. We had an easy drive back. 

1/20/23 Sea Day

 

We had a fun Sea Day yesterday. We slept in. The first activity was Kitchen Nightmares. It was a fun audience participation show in the ice skating theater. Two guests teamed up with a chef and competed in a set of challenges. It was very fun to watch.

We turned in our Nations Scavenger Hunt form. We’d been searching for crew members from all different countries. We ended up with 34 countries represented. The winners got the whole hundred countries plus a few extra.

We had lunch at Johnny Rockets. It’s an extra $12.99 + gratuity. The burgers and fries were very good.

In the outdoor theater, we watched the Music Festival. Six of the musical acts onboard played. 

It was so much fun. Plus we could watch the climbers on the rock climbing wall. It started to rain a little before the last act so we headed indoors. We went to Rising Tide bar and then up to the Wonderland bar. The Wonderland bar has a lot of fun cocktails including a smoked one.

 Dinner was in the Main Dining Room. It was lobster night. I had the French Onion soup and the escargot. They were both delicious. Glenn and I shared a lobster. It was Maine lobster and good. I also had the chicken marsala. Glenn tried the stuff peppers and the shrimp Indian dish. The food in the Main Dining Room has been consistently good.

After dinner, we headed to the casino. Glenn put in $20 and hit for $50 and then they called his name as a $25 free play winner. It was awesome.

The Beatles cover group had a concert in the outdoor theater. We were glad since we hadn’t been to get to the Music Hall early enough to find seats. It was a lot of fun and great to be outside. We headed to bed after the concert because all the bars were packed.

 

1/19/23

Today was a work day. I worked all morning, but had a great view. 

 We headed to the buffet for lunch. It as a lot of selections, but I think the food on Norwegian was higher quality. We lost at trivia. The theme was songs with colors in the title. We spent some time watching the Flowrider. I love the sailaway from St Thomas so we watched from the balcony.

Dinner was Chef's Table. It was in 150 Central Park. We were a little nervous since we didn't love our dinner there. No worries. It was a great experience. Fernando guided us through the wine pairings and was a great server. Chef Julius explained all the dishes. My favorite dish was the lobster salad. 

Glenn's favorite was the branzino.

 The tenderloin was delicious - the best we've had. 

We hung out in Boleros. The show was Tap Factory. I didn't love it. The kids in the audience really liked it. After the show, we went to the Crazy Quest game show. It was a lot of fun and tamer than some others we've seen. We ended the night with a cocktail at Mason Jar and chatting with Maria and Howard at Boleros. 

1/18/23 St Maarten

 We had a great excursion in St Maarten. We did Adventure St Maarten - an amazing race type challenge. We got paired up with Dani and Brett - a couple in their 30s from Michigan It was so much fun. We had three physical challenges, three puzzles, and several clues to walk around the little downtown area. The race part took 2 hours. The finish line was a restaurant where we had to complete a trivia based on what we saw during the race. Here's Glenn doing the beach bowling challenge: 

1/17/23 Sea Day

Glenn got picked for Royal Caribbean's version of Jeopardy. This version puts you on teams of two. He and his teammate won! To make it even more fun, the people sitting around us cheered so loud for them. One guy kept yelling Let's go Tampa! It was so funny even the cruise director was laughing. 

Next up was the Anchors Away! Parade. It was awesome. It was just like a Disney World parade with floats and dancing. It lasted about 30 minutes. 

We grabbed tacos for lunch at Loco Fresh. Then, we lost at music trivia. I went back to to work. Then, I went for a walk on the walking track. The walking track is awesome. It goes all the way around Deck 5 so 2 1/4 laps is a mile. 

We had reservations for the Puzzle Society which was like an escape room. There were 12 of is and we didn't solve it. It was hard. We enjoyed a cocktail on the Rising Tide bar - the bar moves between decks 5 and 8. 

Dinner was Mexican night in the Main Dining room. We had a great poblano soup. Glenn had the butter chicken and I had the enchilada. All good. 

We had reservations for the ice skating show. It was very good. It was a good mix of ice skating and ice dancing. 

1/16/23 Sea Day

 By Glenn 

We had a very fun sea day yesterday.   Started with some Tri-Bond trivia. That is where they provide three words or phrases and you have to come up with the common link. Such as Car, Elephant and Trees.  The answer is "trunk".  One that stumped us was Gun, Bath and Blood.   Answer at the end of the post in case you want to guess.  

We then went to see the country band at The Mason Jar. This is the place we had bring on embarkation day. 

1/15/23 Royal Caribbean Wonder of the Seas

January 15, 2023

We left the Norwegian Prima around 8:30 am. We got stopped because we had a credit on our account. We assumed they would just credit back the card. Nope. They wanted to pay us in cash. No problem. The pier had facial recognition so clearing customs and immigration was breeze. We headed to Target to buy a couple things. We made it to Wonder of the Seas boarding just as they opened up the ship. Perfect timing.

Check in was easy. We were onboard by 10:33 am. We decided to film the tour of the upper decks while it wasn’t too crowded. It was cold so a lot of people stayed inside. We did about an hour and a half of filming. The ship made a great first impression. 

So many places to be and things to do. We are sailing with around 6,600 other guests. We had lunch reservations at Mason Jar – the southern restaurant. Erol, our waiter, was from Turkey. We was floored when we said he’d been to his hometown just outside of Troy. He was so happy. The food at Mason Jar was terrific. We had the deviled eggs, cinnamon roll, Johnny cake with pulled pork and Nashville Hot fried chicken sandwich.

After lunch, we headed to the cabin to unpack. We waited a couple of hours for suitcase, but it didn’t arrive so we headed up to deck for sail away.  The Caribbean music band was great. We checked out the Diamond Club happy hour. It had a lot of servers and a good snack buffet.  We won Beverages trivia. (There were only two teams playing.) The casino had opening night free play. We got $8.00 and promptly lost it. When we got back to the room, our luggage was there. YAY!

We had 8 pm dinner reservations at the main dining room. It’s huge and very busy. We were done in 45 minutes. The tomato soup was great. The Maryland crab cake was pretty good. I had the Indian Chicken Saag. I really liked it. After dinner, we listened to the Latin band in Boleros. We went to the Welcome Aboard show. The 9 piece orchestra is terrific. Mike, the Cruise Director, is a lot of fun. He did a fun magic trick. The two comedians were okay. The first comedian had a great concept for a show – how was Martin Luther King as a dad? It just didn’t land. The second comedian was an insult comedian so he struggled a bit with a clean, family friendly show. We headed to the pub to listen to the guitar player and then the party band. We tried so hard to make to the balloon drop at midnight, but I was fading.

Overall, a great first day onboard.

1/13/23 - 1/14/23 Sea Days

1/13/23 

Today was a chill day. We hung out at Vibe for the whole day. Lunch was the buffet. The buffet doesn't have a lot, but what they have is very good. I liked the focaccia pizza, stir fry, and flank steak. We had dinner at Indulge Food Hall. Glenn had the ribs and I had chicken Tikka masala. Both were very good. We tried to find a good spot at a bar but everything was packed so we headed to bed.

1/14/23 

We had to skip Great Stirrup Cay today due to high winds. I took some seasickness meds before heading to bed. I was glad I did. The ship was bouncy. We had about 30 minutes of churn that was very exciting in the morning.  I worked all morning. Glenn enjoyed the Thermal Lounge in the spa. We had a very good lunch at Hudson's. I had the delicious tomato soup again, the roast beef sandwich, and the kale salad. 

Then we hung out in the cabin. We got to see a nice sunset over Miami. 

We are headed to Los Lobos for dinner.  The guacomole and quesadillas were very good. Glenn had the grilled shrimp. They were delicious. My steak tacos were terrible. The tortilla fell apart. The steak was cold, salty, and tough. The churros for dessert were very good. 

We ended the night at Metropolitan bar with our family - Cowboy and Lovely. We talked about how we do really feel like members of each other's family.  We have to start planning when we will see them again. 

1/12/23 Ocho Rios Jamaica

 

Well, today was a day of disappointments. The Noise Boys show was cancelled due to medical reasons. It rained all morning.  The resorts I wanted to visit in Jamaica were not cooperative so I wasn’t able to film any resort tours as I had planned. Our stop at Great Stirrup Cay was cancelled for Saturday due to a cold front heading across the Caribbean. Then, some type of black substance rained down over the Vibe staining our clothes.

BUT We are still on a cruise so that’s great. I was able to film the ship tour. Guest Services told us to send our clothes to the laundry. If that doesn’t get the stains out, we can look into compensation.

1/11/23 Grand Cayman

 We decided to stay onboard. I really like Grand Cayman, but we didn't book an excursion this time. 

Glenn got up and headed to the spa and Vibe. I worked until around 11:30 am. I headed to the thermal suite. It’s a very odd, dark layout. 

You have several rooms to choose from, but they all don’t seem to be working correctly. The temperatures aren’t quite right. The steam has too much steam or not enough. I stopped by the buffet to grab lunch before meeting Glenn in Vibe. The buffet is small for this size of ship. I’ve been really impressed with the food selection. The buffet has a lot of different styles of food: salad bar, pizza, pasta station, Asian noodle station, tacos, and a grill. We spent the afternoon in Vibe enjoying the whirlpools and the fun bar staff.

In the early evening, we headed up to our reservation at Bullseye. Bullseye is a darts game. The Prima has little areas where you can play different dart games. 

It’s a bit like Top Golf. The computer senses where the dart hits and tallies your score. We played a couple different games. It was really fun.

We headed to the Commodore Room for dinner. This is included. We liked the design less than Hudson’s. The mushroom soup was delicious and I had a great spinach salad with hot bacon dressing like my Mom makes. I had the Veal Oscar. It was good. Glenn had the Mahi Mahi. It was so overcooked that he couldn’t eat it. After dinner, we headed to Metropolitan to hang out with Lovely and Chocolate Cowboy. As usual, it was a lot of laughs. We headed up to the deck for the live music, but it was a little sad. Not a lot of people and no where to reallyvsit and standing just felt awkward. 

We headed to bed early.

1/10/23 Cozumel

 

The Prima docked in Cozumel around 6:30 am this morning. We were at the dock closest to town. We disembarked around 9:00 am and grabbed a taxi. This pier you have to take an escalator up to a walkway over the street, walk through the mall, go down stairs, walk back through the mall, and then you can get a taxi. We visited Dreams Cape Cozumel. 

1/9/23 Sea Day on the Norwegian Prima

 

I worked in the morning then we headed to Galaxy Pavilion for an Escape Room. It’s $15 per person and really well done. We picked the Animals room. We had a family of 3 with us – a Dad and his adult children. The room worked really well for a group of strangers. You can find eight idol pieces within the room so we could all be working on our own puzzles. It was interactive and fun. We solved it with 13 minutes to go.

1/8/23 Embarking Norwegian Prima

 

We had an easy embarkation yesterday onto the Norwegian Prima. It was just a passport check, security, and check in. We got to in the Priority Access line because we are Platinum. They give you the cards at check in. We headed first to the muster station. Right when we got on the ship they had a huge list of all the locations so it was easy to find ours.

12/28/22 - 1/2/23 New Year's in Minneapolis

 Our flight went well. We had about an hour wait for the rental car, but the clerk was so calm that everyone else was calm too. 

We met the Dircks at Bryant Lake Bowling Alley. We had lunch and bowled a couple games. We checked into our Airbnb. It's great. Rob made Glenn pizza and salad for his birthday dinner. Glenn was so excited. They even had a cheesecake with candles for dessert. We stayed at an Airbnb just off Minnetonka boulevard so it worked out perfectly. 

12/29/22 

This was a fun prep day at the Dircks house. We did some prep for the party. We tried to go to the Asian mall for lunch, but it was crazy busy. We went to North Coop to try their chicken tenders and fried green tomatoes. They were good so we ordered them for the party. We played food trivia with Amy and Rob. Of course, the evening ended with Catan. 

12/30/22 

We did more prep and grocery shopping. The Hoffmans arrived. We had a fun dinner of tacos and then played Catan. 

12/31/22 

New Year's Eve. We had a quiet day doing final party preparations. The party was so fun. It was great to see so many of Amy and  Rob's friends. The last time we went was 2013. 

1/1/23 

Lazy day on the couch. The guys watched football and the girls chatted and watched Word Play 

1/2/23 

Headed back to Tampa. We switched our flight to avoid an incoming storm.