reasoning

I bought a $4 kite for Lily on Saturday. It was contagiously warm but quite windy. Seeing it as being perfect kite weather, I felt carefree in spending (well, kind of) and splurged for the unicorn pony with a rainbow.
Lily was ecstatic as was Daddy. They took to the skies.
It wasn't long before the kite was stuck in a neighboring tree. (um, dear, kites are usually best flown in large, open, TREELESS areas--not so much on a neighborhood street surrounded by powerlines and trees)
Eventually, after some tugging, the kite string broke and the kite fell to the ground.
Daddy repairs the string, or atleast ties it together in what he believes to be the best boyscout knot ever. They go back outside, but this time decide that the key is to let the string out all the way. Good idea? Not so much when it's blowing REALLY hard.
Mommmy! Mommy! Come see how high our kite is flying......SNAP! Oh, guess that knot wasn't so well-constructed. Said kite soars off over the railroad tracks, assumed to be long gone.
But, Mom! We have to go find it....So we walk towards the railroad tracks and find the kite----stuck in a tree--a TALL tree---at the VERY top.
See you later kite. $4 for about an hour of fun.

Here's where the 'reasoning' comes in. Andrew says to me, 'well, you just need to buy one of those expensive, nylon kites at Costco...that would have done just fine'.
No, that would just mean that the hour of kite-flying fun would have cost me $20 instead of $4--it's the string that broke....
The kite would still be in the tree.

And now it's snowing. poo!