On Monday morning, Don and his crew (son David and Jason) started laying the footer forms. The foundation footers carry and distribute the load from the verticals and everything they support, and thus are the real foundation of the house. They must be placed on undisturbed ground, so no settlement occurs. No problem, they are on highly compacted glacial till which is mainly silty sand (verging on a poorly consolidated sandstone). In fact, they needed a sledge hammer to drive the form stakes into the ground. The bigger the load, the wider and thicker the footer. For example, the 8 ft high basement walls are supported by 1' thick footers, from 2' 6" to 16" wide depending on the what is above them. Where the footers step up from the basement (-9 ft) to the crawl space (-5 ft) there are vertical footers to accomodate the change in elevation. 
Once the footer forms are in place, they'll start on the rebar. They place vertical rebar every couple of feet, and three layers of horizontal rebar. These are all tied together to create a strong matrix. In addition, the vertical walls are keyed into a 2"x4" slot in each footer.
If the weather holds, they may pour the footers on Friday (Nov. 7th), then start on the vertical walls next week. Notice the little quicky shed they built in the middle of the garage. This is where they'll keep the building plans dry (yeah, sure) during our occasionally moist days (read all day drizzle). Actually, we haven't lost any time to weather, but fully expect too. They got 8" of rain in the Olympic Mountains on Tuesday, but none made it to the infamous blue hole (http://www.komonews.com/weather/faq/4306627.html).
