Building Our Modern Home in Atlanta: Painfully Slow...but getting better

I didn't even realize how long it had been since my last post until I sat down tonight for a new post. That underscores just how slow things have been. Getting out of the ground was quite the ordeal.

This post will be a departure from my typical long-winded updates. Work has been crazy and free time is spent trying to figure how to keep costs down on this project. Here's a bullet list of what has happened in the last two months.

The basement walls got waterproofing. This was perhaps the smoothest step thus far.
Basement plumbing went it. This turned out to be more work than anticipated. However, we feel good about it. We have no sump pump and no ejector pump for a future bathroom. Everything is gravity fed which means less maintenance.
Our cantilevered front porch got poured. This thing made me nervous. I took only one civil engineering class in college and I was scratching my head feverishly trying to figure how this thing was going to support itself. I had the architect confirm everything with the engineer before we poured the concrete. I'm still nervous, but we'll see in roughly 21 days when the supports get removed.
Geothermal wells were drilled. Yep, we went with the geothermal. Two wells each 400 feet deep were drilled in the backyard. It took a week and a half thanks to the rain which got the rig stuck in the mud and then the rig broke down on the second well.
The basement slab was poured along with a retaining wall for one side of the garage. Still no garage slab though.
Framing started last week!!! Finally some progress that makes it feel like we're building a house.

Here are a few pics. I'll post some more framing pics this weekend. BTW, if anyone knows of an anti-rain dance, please share. The rain has not been our friend this winter.