I FINALLY have something to report. We've actually got some progress! It's been months since anything of note has happened on our project. I've been out of town for several weeks in a row and unable to work on the house, our architect has been diligently (but slower than hoped) working on plans for the addition and existing house, and we've been just killing ourselves in the last week getting permits approved. But they are approved (by a miracle) and we're finally moving forward! We have a big hole in our yard and footings poured on the addition. Here are some pics:

And they didn't waste any time after getting the footings done. The next day they were on site forming up the frost walls of the foundation:

I'm going to get back online a bit later and try to upload some pics of our garage addition floor plans and share a little bit about how this whole saga has played out over the past week as we finally got some motion!