Spending for an LLC before it's created?

[Dave Holman]

I'm buying a house with partners. It's under contract and we filed for an LLC which should be approved any day now that we're assigning the contract to. We've been writing personal checks and spending $ for inspections, loan fees etc. Two questions:

Once the LLC is created, and we fund a checking account for it, can we bill the LLC for these costs and reimburse ourselves?

Can/should we declare these costs on the LLC's 2017 tax returns even though they occurred in 2016, before the LLC existed? Thanks for any guidance!