Lorrie Shaw | Contributor

With the Christmas holiday past and heading into the New Year's weekend, many families have a few days off to enjoy a lull in the schedule.

Outdoor playtime (despite the lack of abundant snow), napping, hiding underneath the tree, "helping out" with unwrapping gifts; it's all in good fun, and we're excited to see what our reader's pets have been up to over the past week or so!

In continuing our ongoing Friday Pet Photos feature, we invite you to email a photo of your companion animal to ppsa2mi@gmail.com, any time during the week.

Participating in this fun feature is easy — simply include your companion animal's name, age and city or township of residence in your email. Be sure that your photos are 1200 pixels wide and in .jpg format.

We put the week's photos into a slideshow, publish it and promote it each Friday here in the Pets section. Check out past slideshows here.

Lorrie Shaw is lead pets blogger for AnnArbor.com. Follow her pet and writing adventures on Twitter. She welcomes your contact via email.