IMHO you LDS people struggle and wrestle the scriptures in a vain attempt to prove that God is somehow something less than what He claims to be, which is the First and the Last, the Almighty, the creator of ALL THINGS and the sustainer of ALL THINGS. You fight against the Scriptures to bring God down to the level of man, down to your level. You insist that not only was God once a man, but that Your Heavenly Father was somehow created or fashioned by some other premordial being who was fashioned before him, and on and on and on ad infinitum.
Are you willling to admit that the God that I believe in, a God that Created the Heavens and the Earth and the Universe by the breath of his mouth and all creatures and prniciplites and thones and dominions in all time from eternity to eternity, the First God and the last God and that there are no other Gods in existence anywhere in the universe or beyond the universe, is NOT the God you believe in? That you believe in a lesser God than that which I envision? Can you admit that?
The point is that the concept of creation ex nihilo is not a Christian doctrine. The 2nd century Christians got suckered by the Gnostics, and in an attempt to prove that their version of God was better than the Gnostics, came up with the idea that God can create something out of nothing (top that, you Gnostics!), and you've bought into the tradition.
The bottom line is that all of the wrestling with the traslation from the Greek isn't going to answer just how God created the universe, or what "creation of the universe" really means. I suggest that we all wait until we're granted a personal interview with the Creator, and then our questions will be answered.