What is on your top 3 things to do before you die list?

This is a question that a friend addressed in one of her posts several weeks ago. I have to say that I really gave this some honest thought and just within the past week came up with my third thing. I figured this was also a good topic to bring in the New Year. So here goes...

1. Own a House.

I don't mean have a house, I mean own it outright. My parents paid off their house when I was still in elementary school. At the time I didn't really appreciate how big that was but as an adult I think about how nice it would be to not owe a mortgage payment every month. When we signed our papers for our home we're in right now, I saw how much our total payment towards our house would be and it sort of made me ill. Thirty years is a long time and we are only 3 years into it...and we will probably be moving from this home at some point. However, once we have reached a little more stability, it would be really nice to stay put for a long time and be able to mail in that last mortgage payment. I will be at least 50.

2. Run the Boston Marathon

This may seem a little cliche' to some people, like, oh that's on everyone's list. But is sincerely one of those "must do" things that is worthy of landing a spot in my top three. We have a good friend who ran the Boston Marathon a few years back and seeing her picture, along with time and place and her medal, framed in their house lit some small desire in me that I didn't know was there. Since that time I have faithfully plugged in my tunes and hit the trail running everyday (okay, turned on the TV...I have to resort to the treadmill in the wintertime). Truth be told, I haven't even completed a real race of any sort yet. I am sort of self-conscious about my running (I'm still somewhat of an amateur) so maybe my goal this year will be to just complete A race! My lungs still burn and my legs still ache when I finish a run so the Marathon is quite a ways off. But when I saw a TV program with people twice my age running it for the first time, I figured it was still an attainable goal.

3. Witness a sunrise at Machu Picchu

This among several other world-travel related things like seeing an elephant in the wild (preserves don't count), visiting Angel Falls, laying on the white sand beaches of Seychelles and sleeping in an open hut in Bora Bora. So much to see out there! So my third thing isn't really a third "thing" rather a group of "things" because I couldn't decide on just one.

So now I'm passing this question on to you: What is on your top 3 things to do before you die list?

PS-All pictures were found using Creative Commons search.