So I completed this job and as advertized it was pretty straightforward. The shock that was leaking was in pretty bad shape - the dust cover had almost rusted off and the bottom had caked on oil and road grime.
The big surprise came when I moved on to the drivers side shock - the lower portion of the shock was installed backwards!! The "cone shaped" side was not sitting in the cone shaped depression in the control arm and instead was turned outward from the control arm. I couldn't believe that it would have been like this from the factory and after the job was complete I mentioned my findings to my wife. She seemed to recall that one of the shocks had leaked before and had been replaced by the dealer at some point. I didn't recall this but took a look through my records and sure enough it was replaced in January 2013. This is exactly why I've started to take on repairs and maintenance myself if I can - poor quality work at inflated prices from the dealer. If someone who is just learning is going to be working on the car it may as well be me instead of the monkey the dealer had do the job. Also looked at the bill for January 2013, $300 for ONE shock installed (INCORRECTLY!) vs about $200 for TWO this time doing it myself.