If It's Not One Thing It's Another

Sooo any one who has started a project and it evolves into one project after another ultimately never getting finished knows the kind of day we had with this gazebo kit. With 5 acres and a new house, we have so much landscaping to do. Tim's parents are a huge help but it is endless. It looks like a moonscape. Endless rock and mud. We haven't done anything with the backyard so the gazebo was our first attempt. We started to put together the gazebo and originally we wanted a simple slate patio with the gazebo but we picked the worst day to try to assemble this thing. It was a really warm day and the snow was melting, the ground was unfreezing, the spring was overflowing, it was a sea of mud. We couldn't get the posts level and had to go buy 12 x 12 x 2 planks to get the thing level and then the gazebo was really tall. Tim was helping but by the time we got the whole thing assembled, the two of us were on a ladder on top of a picnic table trying to screw in the finials. Who designs these things? We now are going to have to build a deck because the posts can't be level on the patio and we have mud everywhere. I know we will come back next weekend and the posts will have sunk into the ground and all will be left will be the canopy.