Updating Office 2011 on Mavericks I'm opening Microsoft Word (read; Office 2011 for Mac) for the first time after installing my new Macbook Pro Retina 13". However, if I check for an update there will be one.
After I update it, there is another update.

Why don't I get the latest update right away? Is there any way I can enter my current version number and get updates for the next x-updates?

I've updated 6 times already, and it's going to bug me because I have to do the same on another MacBook.
Microsoft has major and minor updates.  Major updates include all previous updates, minor updates only have what is new since the most recent update.  Their downloads website has all of the updates, both major and minor, that have been released for Office.  The most recent Office update is the top of the list.  As of this writing (Feb 2014), the most current version is 14.3.9.  Its knowledge base article says that it only requires that you have version 14.1.0 installed, which would require you to do two updates (but not more than that).  Sometimes, I've seen it not get the update order right if you haven't rebooted your machine between updates, although I've usually not found that to be a requirement.  I've also seen people run into problems on updating if their license key is a pirated one, but I'm sure you're not doing that. :)  So, for your other MacBook, you should only need to do two updates if you're installing 14.0.0: 14.1, and 14.3.9.