"Real Life in Boise With Kids" - a weekly series where Boise With Kids will feature real, relatable, normal parents doing awesome things across the Treasure Valley. It'll be a space where local parents can share about their passions and give real, honest, tried and true feedback and tips for living their "best (family) life" in Boise. Hopefully it'll give you a chance to learn more about our community, inspire you to try out new places and activities, and get hooked up with pertinent, useful stuff that will help you and your family to thrive in Boise.
Get ready to meet the "Real Parents of the Treasure Valley" - 😜
If you'd like to share about yourself and be featured in this new series email Becca at becca@boisewithkids.com. We can't wait to learn more about you!
Meet Amanda Stone: I am an Idaho Native...actually, minus a year in school at CSI in Twin Falls, I've lived in Boise my whole life. My mom moved here as a military brat at 9 and my dad is also a native. We spent my whole growing up life volunteering. My younger sister and I spent a pretty big chunk of our youth as Girl Scouts. I met my husband when I was 12 and we've been married nearly 10 years now. We have two girls, almost 7 and 9, two dogs, and 10 chickens. After a youth of volunteering, it was pretty natural for me to spend my time as a stay at home mom, before my girls went to school, as a volunteer. I started volunteering for Camp River Run 6 years ago and made the move to Executive Director two years ago.
Camp River Run is a camp for children, ages 7 to 17, fighting a life threatening illness or disabling/ongoing medical condition. We offer a 4 day, 3 night camp at Hidden Paradise in Fairfield, Idaho. We also have 5 day camps around the Treasure Valley. You can find more information on our website at www.campriverrun.org. These programs are offered at no cost to campers and their families so we rely on fundraising events and online giving. We recently had our first golf tournament which was a blast! Currently, we're participating in Idaho Gives and it is one of the biggest ways we raise the funds to send campers to camp. You can learn more at our website, and follow us on Instagram and Facebook!
Local Family Favorites:
Serv'n Up Dreams - Volleyball tournament and food trucks (plus a face painter this year!)
Boise Hawks or Idaho Steelheads games!
Boise State football - my family bleeds blue! We also took some of our Camp River Run campers to a football game last fall.
Disc Golf - 208 Discs is our favorite shop for this. The gear is inexpensive and you don't pay to play. There are courses all over Idaho to play.
Favorite Family-Friendly Places to Eat:
Deja Brew - I'm a huge coffee fan. Deja Brew has coffee, a full menu, a liquor license, and plenty of indoor and outdoor seating space.
Baquets - THE BEST French food. My girls are little foodies and appreciate food of all kinds, but Michele and Fronk at Baquets make the atmosphere incredible. Not to mention the amazing food.
Merritts - it's our go to for breakfast. It's tiny. The servers know us and make some heavily whipped cream hot chocolate for our girls.
Best Park/Playground: Our favorite spots are just outside of Boise.
Riverfront Park - E 42nd St, Garden City, ID 83714
Guerber Park - 2200 Hill Road, Eagle, ID 83616
Eagle Island - 165 S Eagle Island Pkwy, Eagle, ID 83616
Bernie Fisher Park - On the Southwest Corner of Main St. and Linder Road in Kuna - There is a disc golf course, splash pad, greenbelt, river swim spots, and food locations near here.
Best Part of Life in Boise with Kids:
Pretty much everything you could ever want to do as a family is in Boise, or within a couple hours of Boise. We can do our favorite things year 'round!
"Real Life" parenting moment:
After an afternoon of some serious attitude from our oldest, my husband and I decided the girls needed to go to bed early. In our house, my husband takes the girls through the bedtime routine. My husband put my youngest to bed and spent about 5 minutes chatting with our oldest about her attitude. She told him "Dad, I'm real tired!" He said, "Well it's fairly exhausting when you're a jerk all day. It just takes it out of you. That's why it's better to be nice!" She replied, "Oh, is that why you're tired all the time?!" Without realizing it, she had roasted her dad and called him a jerk without actually calling him a jerk. We nearly died laughing after they were both fully in bed.