Let me ask you… How much time would you spend attempting to realize a dream?  one year? five? ten?  Think seriously about that for a moment…

For me, a dream began in November 2007.

My fiance at the time, Mark… who is my husband now, took me out to dinner one evening and casually announced that he was going on a trip to Mt. Everest.  He said… “I’m turning 50 this year and this is an item on my bucket list that I’m going to check off…”  So you know what I was thinking…  ”No you’re not!” I said, “people die up there.”  I was uneasy throughout the entire evening and couldn’t wait to get back home to start proving my case to him.  When I got home, I surfed the internet for every case of death and disaster about Mt. Everest… and there were plenty.   I printed about one inch of paper, and promptly visited him at his office to deliver my evidence the next day.

After lots of highly charged conversation, I learned that his plan was not to go to the summit, but to trek to Mt. Everest Base Camp.  This is the place where the summiters begin their dangerous ascent.  Obviously, I was a little bit more relieved.  In my reasearch, I had learned alot about base camp and knew the risk level was much lower than summiting.  I still had my reservations, but I trusted his judgement and reluctantly agreed to let him chase his dream…

Once I passed this point in the process, I began to think to myself, “Self… What would it be like to climb to the base of the highest mountain on earth?”  I thought, “Would I have the strength to endure a climb like that?”  I kept reminding myself that “to live without risk, was to risk not living.”  I knew that life should be about seizing opportunities and here was an opportunity right in front of me that I could embrace.  A sense of strength come over me and I felt that extra gear within me saying… you can do it!

What I didn’t know was at that moment, I was about to begin a journey that would change my life forever.