Why do I take pictures?

I've always liked looking at pictures. 
In high school I had to opportunity to take a photography class.  I didn't have money for an SLR at the time, so I used point and shoot cameras.  In the class I don't remember going over much of the fundamentals of what makes a good picture, the rule of thirds is something I've only recently come across.  What we did do in the class was develop film.  Nothing beat watching a blank sheet develop a picture.  I didn't really realize it at the time, but this class started a love of photography I still have today.
Since I used point and shoot cameras, I didn't have any settings to play around with, it was flash, or no flash.  I used to go through multiple point and shoots when I'd go on trips.  Some pictures turned out, some didn't, but it was always fun to shoot.  I always ran with a "the more the merrier" when taking pictures.  The more I took, the more that turned out.
After high school photography kind of trailed off.  I still liked looking at pictures though.  I was into cars so I had some car magazines and their pictures were always fun to look at.  The different cars, the angles used to make them interesting.  My wife, well, girlfriend at the time, had a Samsung digital point and shoot that took decent quality pictures.  We went and did a photo day with our cars and I liked how the pictures turned out.  I played with angles I saw them use in magazines to see if I could get something interesting going.
Fast forward a couple years and I'm married.  My wife wanted to get a good camera to document our family.  So we picked up a Canon XSI.  This opened up a whole new world of photography for me.  I remember the first things I did was play with the long exposure the camera was able to do.  I took some low light shots of bathroom soap and night time shots of the road by our apartment, making cool looking light trails.  The love of photography I had in high school was coming back.
Along the theme of low light experimenting, I played around with light painting.  I set my camera to a long exposure in the dark of my garage and painted my car with a flashlight, the picture below was the result:

Had the hood up, painted the engine with the light, dropped the hood and painted the hood.  I thought this ended up pretty cool looking.
Well I think that's enough for this post.
More milestones to come!
50mm 1.8
Landscapes/sunsets
Body upgrade to Canon 60d
Seeing the world differently