Well, the FreeBSD handbook is a good place to start looking. It heavily depends on how you're using your laptop and in which environments. Keeping your system up to date is definitely an important aspect, but so is keeping your system secured. I'm thinking in the likes of setting up a decent firewall, making a backup plan (and using it!), perhaps apply some basic security enhancements (for example: /etc/sysctl.conf might be interesting to look into, together with the sysctl(8) manualpage).
# freebsd-version -ku. It should return two lines, both will say 11.0-RELEASE-p9 (this is assuming you're on 11.0-RELEASE which you should be given your apparent level of familiarity with operating freebsd). If either line says -p8 or lower, then you're already behind and need to update. Review the handbook section on updating for this, because if nothing else you need to start learning how to navigate the handbook to solve uncomplicated problems. It's just two commands you need to run, and you'll find them in the handbook. # pkg update and # pkg upgrade every day or two to make sure you're getting the latest package versions available for you.
lpr is an easy solution if it's a postscript printer, and is easy for a networked printer as well. Wonkity.com has a great page on doing that. As for scanning, this one will scan to USB so I just use that function with a memory stick. As for scan to email, that sounds like it will need special software, and I don't need it anyway since it's basically just an alternative transfer method.