It makes us smile when we give an award. It makes our day a little brighter when we receive a heart-felt email thanking us for the award we gave. It gives us a little ego-boost when we see our award proudly displayed on a quality website. I feel the true spirit of award seeking is, and should always be, a desire to receive outside opinion about one's site. It is far too easy to fall in love with the design we've worked so hard on, and if we simply sit on our laurels, smugly assuming that everyone else will love the design as well, we fail the Internet Community and we fail ourselves.
Awards are, without exception, the best way to seek objective opinion.
If we ask our friends and family what they think, we are asking them to make us feel good and they will. They will applaud our efforts and often go out of their way to make us feel like the final word in web design. They do this because they love us and want us to feel good. I remember with horror the crayon scribbles my Mother put on the refrigerator in an attempt to build my self-esteem. This is hardly objective.