Yes, we are mining to find a new block, and then add transactions to that block.

The blockchain is a giant book of transactions. Finding a block is adding a page to that book. In order to add the page, a miner performs the work Kano and others said.

Part of that work is a set of transactions we'll include in the block (on the page we add.) This list is pulled from the unconfirmed transactions that the pool gets from the network.

As a reward for adding the transaction to our new page, we get the TX fees for that transaction. Kano's pool, unlike some other big pools, pays these fees to the miners.