Understanding a sentence from beginner lesson #54

[Matthew]

I need some help understanding the grammar of this sentence from beginner lesson #54.

Japanese: Kyou wa ii tenki de kaze mo kimochi yoi node, issho ni yoi ichinichi o sugoshimashou!

JPod101 Translation: Because today the weather is nice, and the breeze feels so good, let's spend a good day together!

Below, I've interspersed the Japanese and a proposed translation.

Kyou wa [Today--] ii tenki [good weather] de [and] kaze [breeze] mo [also] kimochi yoi [feels good] node [so], issho ni [together] yoi ichinichi [a good day] o sugoshimashou [let's spend]!

Now my questions:
1) Is the "de" particle in this sentence supposed to mean "and" since it follows a na-adjective?
1b) If you answered yes to (1), can I always (or at least usually) use "de" after a na-adjective to mean "and" but follow it with something that is not another adjective? Example: "Neko ga suki de risu mo suki desu." "I like cats and I like squirrels."
2) Why is "kimochi yoi" used instead of "kimochi ii"?

Arigatou gozaimasu!

[annie]

いい天気 isn't an adjective. いい is the adjective, 天気 is the noun.
で can be used as a way of connecting sentences, and does function as "and" in this sentence.

よい and　いい are really the same adjective. I'm not sure why they use よい in this dialogue, I haven't listened to it and I don't know how to turn on the sound on this computer.

the bell for lunch just rang and I don't have time to answer the other question... maybe someone else will get to it before I come back.

and everyone will recommend that you learn the hiragana and katakana, rather than typing in romaji.

[Matthew]

Right... I'm not sure what I was thinking calling tenki an adjective. Thanks, I think that actually answered all my questions.

[Psy]

Yeah. In fact, I'm going to do one better than reccommend-- I'm gonna yell it at you:

LEARN KANA
(Seriously. You'll be glad you did. I made a tutorial on my website, so check it out if you'd like)

As for your questions:

1) Regarding で (de), yes.
2) In general, yes. で(de) in this sense isn't quite the same as the 助詞 (jyoshi, particle) we all know and love, but rather it's the would-be ~te form of the copula desu (de aru, da, or however you want to say it.) As such, it can be used between clauses much as you use the ~te with other verbs. From my standpoint, nothing seems wrong grammatically with your example sentence, however since I'm not a native, I cannot verify anything more than that.
3) You guys are thinking waaay too hard. It's just a variant!

Hope that helped. Mistakes possible, you have been warned.


Oh yeah, by the way... I'm new here. Hi!

[Matthew]

かなをわかります。

ロウマジはさいこうですよ！

To me, it seems that kana on their own are somewhat useless because you can't actually read a big paragraph of kana (at least not easily). On the other hand, you CAN read a paragraph of kanji+kana (if you know kanji), because it gives you some guidance as to where words start. Pure kana might be a lot more readable if spaces were used between words. So I think what I may do is learn kanji. If I learned 3 kanji per day then I would know the 2000 jouyou kanji in 2 years.

Also, thank you very much for your analysis and the info on the ~te form. I had wrongly thought that it was another function of the で particle.