Our Last Day of School Tradition | What I Got My Daughter for Finishing 8th Grade

Hey everybody. Welcome to the law doc way. I'm Jessica. And today's video is going to be Emily's last day of school gift. That's a tradition that we have done forever. Every last day of school she gets some sort of gift. Normally a lot of it has to do with like things we're going to be doing that summer and some fun summer learning. This year it is her last day of school, but also her last day of middle school. So did just like a little bit more than I normally would because I felt like that like a big deal. So I'm just going to go ahead and start showing you the things that we got for her. The first thing that we got that we get every single year is her tassel. So this is her 2026 tassel. Another last day of school tradition that we have is every school year she wears a cap and gown and we take a last day of school picture. The really cool thing is the cap and gown that she wears is the one that Kevin and I graduated college in. So she's been wearing it since she was in preschool and it absolutely swallowed her and now it fits her, which is kind of sad, bittersweet, but that is what it is. So I got her a 2026 tassel. Also we have two separate lake vacations that are happening this year. One with my mom's side of the family and then one with my dad's side of the family. Both are a week long. So I picked up a few things to kind of go along with that. The first thing is I got her a new bathing suit. She's really picky and doesn't like a lot of skin showing. So it is a like t-shirt with a built-in shelf bra and then some board shorts in not bright colors because that's what she asked for. So a new bathing suit. To go along with the lake vacations, we also got her a hammock so that she can relax, put it up in trees wherever we go, and probably do some reading. And then speaking of reading, she is getting a Kindle Paperwhite. This is the 12th edition. It's the seven inch. I did not purchase this. So about a few weeks ago, I upgraded from this Kindle, which is the 12th edition, seven inch. I've only had it since Christmas, so it's not even six months old. And I upgraded to the color soft, mainly just because I want to color, you guys. No other reason because this is an amazing Kindle. So because of that, she is going to get this as a gift so that she can do reading lakeside, poolside, beachside, and even in the water because it's waterproof. I also got her this super cool case for it. I actually am going to go back and buy me one now too, because it has the clear back so that you can change your insert out and it has this, but you guys look, it's magnetic. So you can protect the Kindle, but you also don't have to fold it back and have it like in your hand. Isn't that cool? So this is one of the things that she's getting along with, I upgraded my page clicker to a finger one. So I'm giving her my remote page clicker to go with that. And then something else that she asked for was a new pair of headphones. So she's always only been allowed to wear like the bone conducting ones that go outside the ear. She's never been allowed to wear anything that goes inside. That was our personal preference for things. And then I recently got a pair of over the ear, like big headphones, full audio books with, and she tried them and really likes them. And she's able to wear those with her glasses, which is like a whole nother thing, especially because she has some like sensory stuff. So because of that, she asked for a pair. She asked for them for her birthday, but I decided to go ahead and surprise her and get them for her for the end of eighth grade graduation. So she could listen to music and audio books on our vacation and on our drives and stuff. These are the JLab over the ear. I went back and forth when I was looking for a pair for me, and I just did not want to spend $200 to $250 on a pair of headphones. And I was able to catch these on a flash sale half off. So they're like 90 regularly and I got them for 50. I wish I had known I was getting her a pair too, because you could bundle and get two, I think for even cheaper. And then of course, I also got her some things for pool school, because if you don't know, that is something that we do each and every summer is full school. We spend a lot of time in our pool. So I like to have games that we can play in there. We have a floating table and we have some other things. I'll link it up here in case you want to know more about it. The first thing I got was dumpster dice. This is not like technically a water game, but it is a plastic box and dice. All of those are okay in the water. We have trash dice, which is a trash can and it's for two players and we love it. And then the dice, the dumpster is for four players. So I figured three of us can play. We just won't use one of the color dice when we play. So we have the other one and then we love it. So I got this one for her, both of which would work for the pool. I also grabbed waterproof set. We have a lot of card games. We did not own this one yet. So we're adding this to our pool school collection. And then this is kind of for the pool, but also I had the lake trips in mind, because we'll be going with her younger cousins. So this is the silly disc. So you have like a card that has categories and for example, things with wheels. And when you have the ball in your hand, you have 10 seconds to find something on this floating disc that has wheels. And then you have to throw it to the next person. They have 10 seconds. So it's kind of like a water version of giant spot it. And you know, Emily loves that. So I figured this would be perfect for her. And it gives her something to play with her younger cousins that she's also still going to like. And then I got her one more game, because this is so funny, because it's actually a preschool game. She saw it on TikTok, watching my TikTok. She doesn't have social media. I was scrolling TikTok and she saw this game and she's like, I want it. And I'm like, literally a preschool game. You do not need that. But it is the real big catch game. And what it was is they were playing it on TikTok and they would like sort them out. And then they would count and see how many like fishy pieces that each person got. And that decided who was going to get to do something. She sold me on it because we have decided that we're going to do a summer book club, like a mother-daughter summer book club, reading some more mature and like young adult books. And we're each going to read them and then come back and talk about them. And so she has decided that that's how we're going to pick our book for summer book club, is she's going to pick one, I'm going to pick one. And then we're going to play the fishy game to see whose book wins. So she suckered me into it. So I'm going to go ahead and give her this. And you guys, I'm telling you, she's going to be so excited for this because she's like begged for it. And then this summer in our homeschool, one of the things that we're going to be going like really, really big into is movies. We're going to do like a movie summer. So I grabbed a couple of things to go along with that to surprise her with. One is this movie trivia deck. It is just all kinds of questions, 800 total questions about different kinds of movies. So I thought that would be fun for us to play over dinners. We love to play trivia while we're eating. Then I got her this Lego and make your own movie so that she can work on making her own movie. And then I got her a summer prep book. Now, I'm going to tell you guys this in my summer hall or my summer plans. But we are probably going to be finishing up curriculum first because we haven't finished it. However, I did get her this summer book that has all of the subjects in it. And it's like a get ready for ninth grade. So if we finish that and we have time, we'll do this. Or if she's like not in the mood to do that and want something different. I just have this on hand for her. And then also something that we've been seeing on TikTok like crazy again, on mine, not hers, is the book Dungeon Carl, Dungeon Crawler Carl. And we keep seeing it everywhere, like everywhere. You guys, that is not like my cup of tea. So I was like, please don't make me read that for our book club. But I looked it up and I was going to get it for her. But I was like, oh, maybe I should read it first because I just wasn't sure. And somehow I ended up finding they had it in a graphic novel. Like it just came out in a graphic novel. So I decided to get it for her so that she could still get the story and read it and probably a more appropriate way. If you or your kids have read Dungeon Crawler Carl, please tell me if it's appropriate for a 14 year old. Because I just wasn't sure. So I got her the graphic novel version. And then I don't have it because like I didn't print it or have a physical. But I'm also going to go ahead and give her a $25 Amazon gift card so that she can buy books for her Kindle. I normally get her quite a few books, but I already know we'll be buying the books for the summer book club that her and I are going to be doing. And I wanted to give her the ability to pick out some of her own books. I'm just going to give her a gift card to go along with a Kindle so she can get whatever book she wants.